This DP-203 practice question tests your understanding of develop data processing. The scenario asks you to isolate a root cause — eliminate options that address a different problem before choosing. After answering, compare your reasoning against the explanation and wrong-answer breakdown below. Once you have made your selection, read the full explanation to reinforce the concept and understand why each distractor is designed to mislead on exam day.
You have an Azure Data Factory pipeline that executes a stored procedure in Azure SQL Database. The pipeline fails with an error indicating that the stored procedure ran out of memory. What change should you make to the pipeline to resolve this?
Add a retry policy to the stored procedure activity.
Why wrong: Retry does not resolve resource exhaustion.
Increase the pipeline activity timeout.
Why wrong: Timeout does not increase memory allocation.
Use a Self-Hosted Integration Runtime instead of Azure IR.
Why wrong: IR is for connectivity, not database memory.
Scale up the Azure SQL Database to a higher service tier.
Higher service tiers provide more memory for the database.
Answer choices
Answer the question above first, then reveal the full breakdown to understand why each option is right or wrong.
Correct answer & explanation
Scale up the Azure SQL Database to a higher service tier.
The error indicates that the stored procedure ran out of memory, which is a resource limitation at the database level, not a transient failure or timeout issue. Scaling up the Azure SQL Database to a higher service tier (e.g., from Standard to Premium or increasing DTU/vCore count) provides more memory and compute resources, directly resolving the out-of-memory condition.
Key principle: Answer the scenario, not the keyword: identify the specific constraint before choosing the most familiar-sounding option.
Answer analysis
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
Add a retry policy to the stored procedure activity.
Why it's wrong here
Retry does not resolve resource exhaustion.
Increase the pipeline activity timeout.
Why it's wrong here
Timeout does not increase memory allocation.
Use a Self-Hosted Integration Runtime instead of Azure IR.
Why it's wrong here
IR is for connectivity, not database memory.
Scale up the Azure SQL Database to a higher service tier.
Why this is correct
Higher service tiers provide more memory for the database.
Related concept
Read the scenario before looking for a memorised answer.
Common exam traps
The trap here is that candidates confuse pipeline-level retries or timeouts with database-level resource constraints, assuming that retrying or waiting longer will fix a memory exhaustion error, which is a hard resource limit that requires scaling the database.
Detailed technical explanation
Azure SQL Database memory is governed by the service tier's resource limits (e.g., DTU or vCore model). When a stored procedure processes large datasets or complex operations, it may exceed the available memory (e.g., due to large hash joins or sort operations), causing an out-of-memory error. Scaling up increases the buffer pool and query memory grants, allowing the procedure to complete successfully. Note that enabling 'Result Set Caching' or optimizing the procedure's query plan can sometimes mitigate memory pressure, but scaling is the direct fix for resource exhaustion.
Key takeaway
Answer the scenario, not the keyword: identify the specific constraint before choosing the most familiar-sounding option.
Real-world example
A media company stores terabytes of video archives that are accessed once a year for audit purposes. Moving these objects to a cold storage tier (Azure Archive, S3 Glacier, or Google Nearline) costs a fraction of hot storage. Questions like this test whether you understand storage tiers, access frequency tradeoffs, and retrieval latency requirements.
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FAQ
Develop data processing — This question tests Develop data processing — Read the scenario before looking for a memorised answer..
The correct answer is: Scale up the Azure SQL Database to a higher service tier. — The error indicates that the stored procedure ran out of memory, which is a resource limitation at the database level, not a transient failure or timeout issue. Scaling up the Azure SQL Database to a higher service tier (e.g., from Standard to Premium or increasing DTU/vCore count) provides more memory and compute resources, directly resolving the out-of-memory condition.
Identify which exam domain this question belongs to, review the core concept, then practise similar questions from the same domain.
Read the scenario before looking for a memorised answer.
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Last reviewed: Jun 24, 2026
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