DP-900 Practice Question: Identify considerations for relational data on Azure
This DP-900 practice question tests your understanding of identify considerations for relational data on azure. Read the scenario carefully and evaluate each option against the stated constraints before committing to an answer. 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.
A database designer is creating a relational database for a library system. Each book can have multiple authors, and each author may have written many books. To avoid data redundancy, the designer creates a separate Authors table and a BookAuthors junction table. This process of organizing data to reduce redundancy and improve integrity is called:
Why wrong: Incorrect. Denormalization intentionally adds redundancy to optimize read performance, opposite of what is described.
B
Indexing
Why wrong: Incorrect. Indexing improves search performance but does not reduce data redundancy.
C
Normalization
Correct. Normalization organizes data into separate entities to eliminate redundancy; the junction table is a standard technique for many-to-many relationships.
D
Partitioning
Why wrong: Incorrect. Partitioning splits a table into smaller segments for manageability or performance, not to reduce redundancy.
Answer the question above first, then reveal the full breakdown to understand why each option is right or wrong.
Correct answer & explanation
✓
Normalization
Normalization is the process of organizing data in a relational database to reduce redundancy and improve data integrity by dividing large tables into smaller, related tables and defining relationships between them. In this scenario, creating separate Authors and BookAuthors junction tables eliminates the redundancy of storing author information multiple times for each book, which is a classic example of normalization (specifically achieving third normal form). This directly supports the relational database goal of minimizing duplicate data and ensuring consistency.
Key principle: Answer the scenario, not the keyword: identify the specific constraint before choosing the most familiar-sounding 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.
✗
Denormalization
Why it's wrong here
Incorrect. Denormalization intentionally adds redundancy to optimize read performance, opposite of what is described.
✗
Indexing
Why it's wrong here
Incorrect. Indexing improves search performance but does not reduce data redundancy.
✓
Normalization
Why this is correct
Correct. Normalization organizes data into separate entities to eliminate redundancy; the junction table is a standard technique for many-to-many relationships.
Related concept
Read the scenario before looking for a memorised answer.
✗
Partitioning
Why it's wrong here
Incorrect. Partitioning splits a table into smaller segments for manageability or performance, not to reduce redundancy.
Common exam traps
Common exam trap: answer the scenario, not the keyword
The trap here is that candidates often confuse normalization with denormalization, mistakenly thinking that splitting tables to reduce redundancy is a form of denormalization, when in fact it is the core definition of normalization.
Detailed technical explanation
How to think about this question
Normalization in relational databases is guided by formal normal forms (1NF, 2NF, 3NF, BCNF), where the junction table (BookAuthors) resolves a many-to-many relationship by storing foreign keys from both the Books and Authors tables, ensuring each fact is stored exactly once. Under the hood, this eliminates update anomalies—for example, if an author's name changes, only one row in the Authors table needs updating, rather than every book row. In a real-world library system with millions of records, this design prevents data inconsistency and reduces storage overhead, which is critical for maintaining referential integrity enforced by foreign key constraints.
KKey Concepts to Remember
Read the scenario before looking for a memorised answer.
Find the constraint that changes the correct option.
Eliminate answers that are true in general but not in this case.
TExam Day Tips
→Watch for words such as best, first, most likely and least administrative effort.
→Review why wrong options are wrong, not only why the correct option is correct.
Key takeaway
Answer the scenario, not the keyword: identify the specific constraint before choosing the most familiar-sounding option.
Real-world example
How this comes up in practice
An e-commerce site experiences heavy traffic on Black Friday and near-zero traffic during off-peak weeks. Rather than provisioning permanent large VMs, the team uses auto-scaling groups that add capacity automatically under load and reduce it overnight. Questions like this test whether you understand elasticity, availability zones, and cloud compute scaling patterns.
Related glossary terms
Concepts from this question explained
These glossary pages explain the core terms tested in this DP-900 question in full detail.
Identify considerations for relational data on Azure — This question tests Identify considerations for relational data on Azure — Read the scenario before looking for a memorised answer..
What is the correct answer to this question?
The correct answer is: Normalization — Normalization is the process of organizing data in a relational database to reduce redundancy and improve data integrity by dividing large tables into smaller, related tables and defining relationships between them. In this scenario, creating separate Authors and BookAuthors junction tables eliminates the redundancy of storing author information multiple times for each book, which is a classic example of normalization (specifically achieving third normal form). This directly supports the relational database goal of minimizing duplicate data and ensuring consistency.
What should I do if I get this DP-900 question wrong?
Identify which exam domain this question belongs to, review the core concept, then practise similar questions from the same domain.
What is the key concept behind this question?
Read the scenario before looking for a memorised answer.
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Question Discussion
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