DP-900 Describe an analytics workload on Azure Practice Question
A media company uses Azure Stream Analytics to process live video streaming telemetry from Azure Event Hubs. They need to write the processed data to a destination that supports fast, random read/write access for a custom application that performs lookups. The solution must minimize latency. Which output should they configure?
⚠ Common exam trap
The trap here is assuming that any Azure storage service can serve low-latency lookups, but only relational databases like Azure SQL Database provide the necessary random access performance.
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 designed for transactional workloads with fast, random read/write access and low latency. As an output for Azure Stream Analytics, it enables real-time updates that a custom application can query with minimal delay. Other outputs like Blob Storage or Data Lake are optimized for batch and sequential access, not low-latency lookups.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✗
Power BI
Why it's wrong here
Power BI is a business analytics service for creating interactive reports and dashboards. It is not a data store and does not support random read/write access for applications. While Stream Analytics can output to Power BI for real-time visualization, it is not suitable for serving a custom application that requires low-latency lookups. Thus, it does not meet the scenario's needs.
- ✗
Azure Data Lake Storage Gen2
Why it's wrong here
Azure Data Lake Storage Gen2 is a scalable storage service for big data analytics, but it is not designed for low-latency random access. It is optimized for high-throughput sequential reads and writes, typical of batch processing. Using it as an output for real-time lookups would result in higher latency and lack of indexing, failing to meet the application's performance requirements.
- ✓
Azure SQL Database
Why this is correct
Azure SQL Database is a relational database service that supports fast, random read/write access, making it suitable for applications that require low-latency lookups. As an output for Azure Stream Analytics, it allows real-time updates and queries. It is designed for OLTP workloads, providing the necessary performance and indexing capabilities for this scenario.
- ✗
Azure Blob Storage
Why it's wrong here
Azure Blob Storage is an object storage service optimized for storing large amounts of unstructured data, but it does not provide low-latency random read/write access. It is better suited for sequential writes and batch processing. For a custom application requiring fast lookups, Blob Storage would introduce higher latency and lacks indexing capabilities, making it unsuitable.
Go deeper
Related to this question
Learn chapter
Azure Data Lake Storage Gen2 Hierarchical Namespace
Key term
Data lake
A data lake is a centralized storage repository that holds vast amounts of raw data in its native format until it is needed for analysis.
Key term
Blob storage
Blob storage is a cloud service for storing large amounts of unstructured data, such as text or binary data, like documents, images, and videos.
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Senior Network & Security Engineer · founder of Courseiva
Last reviewed September 2026 · checked against the official Microsoft exam blueprint
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