DP-203 Develop data processing Practice Question
Your team uses Azure Synapse Analytics serverless SQL pool to query Parquet files in Azure Data Lake Storage Gen2. The query performance is inconsistent, and some queries take a long time to execute. You need to improve query performance. 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 statistics on the columns used in joins and filters
(Create statistics on the columns used in joins and filters) is correct because serverless SQL pool relies on statistics for optimal query plans. Option A (Increase the maximum degree of parallelism) is not directly applicable. Option C (Convert to CSV) would degrade performance. Option D (Use a dedicated SQL pool) may be an option but not the best immediate step.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✗
Increase the MAXDOP setting in the query
Why it's wrong here
MAXDOP is not a user-configurable setting in serverless.
- ✓
Create statistics on the columns used in joins and filters
Why this is correct
Statistics help the optimizer generate efficient plans.
- ✗
Move the data to a dedicated SQL pool
Why it's wrong here
Costly and not a direct fix.
- ✗
Convert the Parquet files to CSV format
Why it's wrong here
CSV is slower than Parquet.
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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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.