DP-203 Develop data processing Practice Question
A data engineering team is building a batch processing solution for a financial services company. Data is ingested daily from multiple sources into Azure Data Lake Storage Gen2 in CSV format. The data must be transformed (filtered, aggregated, joined) and loaded into Azure Synapse Analytics dedicated SQL pool. The team must optimize for cost and performance. The total data volume is 2 TB per day. The team has the following options:
Option A: Use Azure Data Factory pipelines with copy activity to load raw CSV files into Synapse staging tables, then use T-SQL stored procedures in Synapse to perform transformations.
Option B: Use Azure Databricks with Auto Loader to incrementally ingest CSV files, perform transformations in Spark, and write the results to Synapse using the Spark Synapse connector.
Option C: Use Azure Data Factory with mapping data flows to transform the data in a serverless environment and then write to Synapse.
Option D: Use Azure Synapse Pipelines (built on ADF) with a notebook activity that runs a PySpark notebook in Synapse Spark pool to transform and load data.
Which option should the team choose to minimize cost and management overhead while meeting performance requirements?
Answer choices
Why each option matters
Answer the question above first, then reveal the full breakdown to understand why each option is right or wrong.
Correct answer & explanation
✓
Option C
Correct answer: B (Option C — Azure Data Factory mapping data flows). Mapping data flows execute on a serverless Azure Data Factory integration runtime, scaling automatically and costing only per run, which minimizes cost and management overhead. Answer choice A (Option B, Azure Databricks with Auto Loader) requires managing Spark clusters. Answer choice C (Option A, Azure Data Factory copy activity plus T-SQL stored procedures) requires staging tables and stored procedures. Answer choice D (Option D, Synapse Pipelines with a notebook activity) requires managing Synapse Spark pools. Therefore, mapping data flows are the most cost-effective and lowest-overhead option.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✗
Option B
Why it's wrong here
Requires cluster management and higher cost.
- ✓
Option C
Why this is correct
Serverless, cost-effective, low overhead.
- ✗
Option A
Why it's wrong here
Requires manual staging and T-SQL management.
- ✗
Option D
Why it's wrong here
Requires Synapse Spark pool management.
Quick reference
Cloud Service Model Comparison
| Model | You Manage | Provider Manages | Examples |
|---|---|---|---|
| IaaS | OS, runtime, apps, data | Hardware, hypervisor, networking | EC2, Azure VMs, GCP Compute Engine |
| PaaS | Apps and data | OS, runtime, middleware, hardware | Elastic Beanstalk, Azure App Service |
| SaaS | Data and settings only | Everything else | Microsoft 365, Salesforce, Workday |
| FaaS / Serverless | Function code only | Infra, scaling, runtime | Lambda, Azure Functions, Cloud Run |
| CaaS | Containers and apps | Kubernetes, OS, hardware | EKS, AKS, GKE |
Go deeper
Related to this question
Learn chapter
Introduction to Azure Data Engineering
Key term
Azure Data Factory
Azure Data Factory is a cloud-based data integration service that lets you create, schedule, and orchestrate data pipelines to move and transform data from various sources to destinations.
Key term
Azure Databricks
Azure Databricks is a fast, easy, and collaborative Apache Spark-based analytics platform optimized for Azure that lets data teams prepare data, run machine learning models, and build data pipelines using a single workspace.
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JA
Written by Johnson Ajibi, MSc IT Security
Senior Network & Security Engineer · founder of Courseiva
This DP-203 practice question is part of Courseiva's free Microsoft certification practice question bank. Courseiva provides original exam-style practice questions with explanations, topic-based practice, mock exams, readiness tracking, and study analytics to help learners prepare for the DP-203 exam.