Question 345 of 760
DP-203 Develop data processing Practice Question
You are using Azure Synapse Analytics serverless SQL pool to query Parquet files in Azure Data Lake Storage Gen2. You notice that queries are slower than expected. The files are large (500 MB each) and not partitioned. You need to improve query performance without moving data. What should you do?
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
✓
Create external tables with explicit file format and partition elimination hints.
Creating external tables with file format options allows the serverless SQL pool to use metadata for optimization. Changing the file format to CSV or using OPENROWSET without external tables does not improve performance as much. Converting to Delta format requires data movement. Partitioning the files would be best, but that requires reorganizing files.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✗
Convert the Parquet files to Delta format using Azure Databricks.
Why it's wrong here
This requires moving data and additional processing.
- ✗
Change the files to CSV format with a header row.
Why it's wrong here
CSV files are generally slower to query than Parquet.
- ✗
Use OPENROWSET with BULK and specify ROWSET_OPTIONS for better performance.
Why it's wrong here
OPENROWSET without external tables does not benefit from metadata optimization.
- ✓
Create external tables with explicit file format and partition elimination hints.
Why this is correct
External tables with file format optimization can improve query performance by enabling metadata-based pruning.
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 |
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Last reviewed: Jun 21, 2026
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