DP-900 Practice Question: Identify considerations for relational data on Azure
A financial application requires strict consistency and transaction support (ACID). Which Azure data service is most appropriate for storing its core transactional data?
⚠ Common exam trap
It's easy for candidates to confuse Azure Cosmos DB's 'consistency levels' with full ACID transaction support, not realizing that Cosmos DB sacrifices strict transactional guarantees for global scalability and low latency.
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
✓
Azure SQL Database
Azure SQL Database is a fully managed relational database service that provides full ACID (Atomicity, Consistency, Isolation, Durability) transaction support through its SQL Server engine. It is the correct choice for a financial application requiring strict consistency and transactional integrity, as it guarantees that all transactions are processed reliably and adhere to the ACID properties.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✗
Azure Cosmos DB
Why it's wrong here
Azure Cosmos DB offers configurable consistency levels, including strong consistency, but that consistency applies only to a single logical partition; it does not provide multi-document ACID transactions. Although Cosmos DB supports transactional batch operations within a partition, cross-partition atomicity is not guaranteed, so a financial system relying on transactions spanning multiple items cannot depend on it. Its schema-agnostic, multi-model nature also means it lacks the relational integrity constraints (foreign keys, unique constraints) that financial databases typically require.
- ✓
Azure SQL Database
Why this is correct
Azure SQL Database is the correct choice because it is a fully relational database engine that enforces ACID (Atomicity, Consistency, Isolation, Durability) properties for every transaction. Using T-SQL, it provides multi-statement transactions with commit/rollback semantics, row-level locking, and configurable isolation levels to guarantee strict consistency even under concurrent access. This makes it suitable for financial applications where data integrity must be preserved across related tables.
- ✗
Azure Table Storage
Why it's wrong here
Azure Table Storage is a NoSQL key-value store that offers atomic operations only on a single entity (row), and its default consistency mode is eventual, not strong. While you can use optimistic concurrency via ETags, there is no support for multi-entity transactions or serializable isolation, so updates spanning multiple rows cannot be made atomically. This lack of ACID guarantees makes it inappropriate for financial workloads requiring strict data integrity.
- ✗
Azure Data Lake Storage
Why it's wrong here
Azure Data Lake Storage (built on Blob Storage) is designed for scalable big-data analytics and provides hierarchical file-system semantics, not transactional data management. It offers no support for relational transactions, foreign keys, or committed/uncommitted changes; data is written as files and is often processed in batch. As such, it cannot provide the strong ACID guarantees a financial application needs for real-time transactional consistency.
Go deeper
Related to this question
Learn chapter
Data Roles and Core Concepts
Key term
Transactional data
Transactional data is information that captures a specific event or exchange, such as a sale, a payment, or a system log entry, and is recorded in a database or log system.
Key term
Azure SQL Database
Azure SQL Database is a fully managed relational database-as-a-service (DBaaS) in Microsoft Azure, based on the SQL Server engine, that handles scaling, backups, patching, and high availability automatically.
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