Question 1hardmultiple choice
Full question →hardmultiple choiceObjective-mapped
A retail company has an Azure SQL Database that handles OLTP transactions for its e-commerce platform. The analytics team needs to run complex reporting queries that join multiple tables (e.g., orders, products, customers) and aggregate millions of rows. These queries are long-running and would negatively impact the performance of the OLTP database if run directly. The company wants to use a separate analytics service that supports T-SQL queries, can scale compute independently, and provides a serverless option to avoid provisioning fixed resources. Which Azure service should they choose?
Answer choices
Why each option matters
Good practice is not just finding the correct option. The wrong answers often show the exact trap the exam wants you to fall into.
A
Best answer
Azure Synapse Analytics (dedicated SQL pool)
Synapse Analytics provides a dedicated SQL pool with MPP architecture for complex queries on large datasets, supports T-SQL, and can be scaled independently. A serverless option is also available, but the dedicated pool is suited for consistent heavy workloads.
B
Distractor review
Azure Analysis Services
Azure Analysis Services is a semantic modeling platform that provides in-memory tabular models; it does not directly execute T-SQL queries against large datasets like a data warehouse.
C
Distractor review
Azure Databricks
Azure Databricks is a Spark-based analytics platform that uses Spark SQL (which is not standard T-SQL) and requires a different skill set; it is not the best fit for an organization that wants to use T-SQL directly.
D
Distractor review
Azure SQL Database (creating a secondary replica)
Even if a secondary replica is used for reporting, Azure SQL Database is not optimized for massive parallel processing of complex joins over billions of rows; it would still compete for resources and lacks the MPP architecture of Synapse.
Common exam trap
Common exam trap: NAT rules depend on direction and matching traffic
NAT is not only about the public address. The inside/outside interface roles and the ACL or rule that matches traffic are just as important.
Technical deep dive
How to think about this question
NAT questions usually test address translation, overload/PAT behaviour, static mappings and whether the right traffic is being translated. Read the interface direction and address terms carefully.
KKey Concepts to Remember
- Static NAT maps one inside address to one outside address.
- PAT allows many inside hosts to share one public address using ports.
- Inside local and inside global describe the private and translated addresses.
- NAT ACLs identify traffic for translation, not always security filtering.
TExam Day Tips
- Identify inside and outside interfaces first.
- Check whether the scenario needs static NAT, dynamic NAT or PAT.
- Do not confuse NAT matching ACLs with normal packet-filtering intent.
Related practice questions
Related DP-900 practice-question pages
Use these pages to review the topic behind this question. This is how one missed question becomes focused revision.
More questions from this exam
Keep practising from the same exam bank, or move into a focused topic page if this question exposed a weak area.
Question 1
A data engineer needs to process streaming data from IoT devices and store the results in Azure Data Lake Storage for long-term analytics. The data must be processed in near real-time to detect anomalies and trigger alerts. Which Azure service should the engineer use for stream processing?
Question 2
A data engineer needs to query data stored in CSV files in Azure Data Lake Storage Gen2 using T-SQL in Azure Synapse Analytics, without loading the data into the database. Which feature should they use?
Question 3
A data engineer needs to process raw clickstream data from multiple websites that is stored in Azure Blob Storage as JSON files. The processing must run automatically every hour, transform the data into a structured format for reporting, and handle schema changes in the source data without manual intervention. Which Azure service should be used?
Question 4
A data engineer is designing a data lake architecture in Azure. They plan to first ingest raw data from various sources into a landing zone in Azure Data Lake Storage Gen2. Then they will clean, validate, and deduplicate that data in a second zone. Finally, they will create aggregated, business-ready datasets in a third zone for analysts. This layered approach is known as which architecture?
Question 5
A data engineer needs to transform large datasets stored in Azure Data Lake Storage Gen2 using Python and Apache Spark. They want a serverless compute option that automatically scales and requires no cluster management. Which Azure service should they use?
Question 6
A company collects customer feedback forms. Each form contains always-present fields like CustomerID and SubmissionDate, but also a free-text Comments field and optional fields like Rating or ProductCategory that vary between forms. How should this data be classified?
FAQ
Questions learners often ask
What does this DP-900 question test?
Static NAT maps one inside address to one outside address.
What is the correct answer to this question?
The correct answer is: Azure Synapse Analytics (dedicated SQL pool) — Azure Synapse Analytics (formerly SQL Data Warehouse) is a cloud-based analytics service that provides a massively parallel processing (MPP) engine for large-scale data warehousing. It supports T-SQL, can scale compute independently from storage, and offers a serverless SQL pool option that allows querying data in data lakes without provisioning resources. Azure Analysis Services is for semantic models, Azure Databricks is a Spark-based analytics platform that does not natively support T-SQL, and Azure SQL Database is the OLTP source itself and would cause performance issues. Therefore, Azure Synapse Analytics is the correct choice.
What should I do if I get this DP-900 question wrong?
Then try more questions from the same exam bank and focus on understanding why the wrong options are tempting.
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