You are deploying an Azure SQL Database that will be used by a global application. You need to ensure that read-intensive workloads are offloaded from the primary database to improve performance. Which feature should you enable?
Read scale-out provides a read-only replica for offloading reads.
Why this answer
Read scale-out (A) is the correct feature because it allows you to offload read-only workloads to a read-only replica of the Azure SQL Database. By enabling the 'Read scale-out' property, the database automatically routes connections with `ApplicationIntent=ReadOnly` to a secondary replica, freeing the primary from read-intensive queries and improving overall performance for write operations.
Exam trap
The trap here is that candidates often confuse Active geo-replication with read scale-out, but the key distinction is that read scale-out is a single-database feature within the same region that transparently routes read-only connections, whereas geo-replication requires explicit connection string changes and is designed for cross-region disaster recovery.
How to eliminate wrong answers
Option B is wrong because Automatic tuning is a feature that uses AI to optimize query performance (e.g., index creation, plan forcing), but it does not offload read workloads to a separate replica. Option C is wrong because Connection pooling is a client-side technique that reuses database connections to reduce latency, but it does not redirect read traffic to a secondary database. Option D is wrong because Active geo-replication creates readable secondary replicas in different regions for disaster recovery and geo-distributed reads, but it requires manual connection string changes or application logic to route read traffic, unlike the transparent, built-in read scale-out feature.