DP-900 Describe core data concepts Practice Question
A small business wants to use Azure to store and analyze customer feedback from surveys. The surveys are collected via a web app and stored as JSON files. The business needs to run SQL-based queries on the data and generate reports in Power BI. They have a limited budget and prefer a serverless option to minimize management overhead. Which Azure service should they use?
⚠ Common exam trap
A common mix-up: candidates confuse 'serverless' with 'fully managed' and choose Azure SQL Database (which is managed but not serverless in the pay-per-query sense) or Azure Databricks (which is serverless but requires Spark expertise and is not SQL-native), missing that Azure Synapse serverless SQL pool is the only option that combines serverless billing, direct JSON querying, and SQL-based reporting for Power BI.
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 Synapse Analytics serverless SQL pool
Azure Synapse Analytics serverless SQL pool is the correct choice because it allows you to query JSON files directly from Azure Data Lake Storage or Blob Storage using standard T-SQL, without provisioning any infrastructure. It is serverless (pay-per-query), supports SQL-based queries, and integrates seamlessly with Power BI for reporting, making it ideal for a small business with a limited budget and minimal management overhead.
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 Analysis Services
Why it's wrong here
Azure Analysis Services is a semantic modeling platform that requires you to provision a dedicated server and create the model it hosts—it never reads raw JSON from Azure Storage. You would first have to ingest and transform the data into a tabular model, adding both licensing cost and ongoing management overhead, and it is not built for ad-hoc querying of file-based semi-structured data. For the described scenario it does not reduce cost or complexity.
- ✗
Azure Databricks
Why it's wrong here
Azure Databricks runs on managed Apache Spark clusters that you must start, size, and tune, so you pay for running VMs even when you are not actively querying. While it can use JSON natively and offers powerful data engineering capabilities, it is far more complex than these requirements demand—setting up cluster policies, libraries, and pipelines is heavy for a small business. The answer is wrong because it adds significant management responsibility and cost compared with a serverless query service.
- ✓
Azure Synapse Analytics serverless SQL pool
Why this is correct
Azure Synapse Analytics serverless SQL pool lets you run T-SQL queries directly against JSON and other files in Azure Data Lake Storage with no dedicated compute to provision—you pay only for the amount of data read per query. It can parse JSON automatically using OPENJSON and standard T-SQL, making it a natural fit for storing and exploring customer data in a data lake. Because no cluster or database is pre-provisioned, it is the cheapest, lowest-management option here.
- ✗
Azure SQL Database
Why it's wrong here
Azure SQL Database is a fully managed relational database instance that you must provision to a specific service tier, generating a fixed monthly cost whether or not queries run. Unlike a serverless SQL pool, it is not designed to query external file-based JSON directly without first importing it into tables, requiring extra ETL work. For ad-hoc analysis of JSON in Azure Storage, this option therefore incurs more setup, more cost, and less immediate flexibility.
Quick reference
Cloud Service Model Comparison
| Model | You Manage | Provider Manages | Examples |
|---|---|---|---|
| IaaS | OS, runtime, apps, data | Hardware, hypervisor, networking | EC2, Azure VMs, GCP Compute Engine |
| PaaS | Apps and data | OS, runtime, middleware, hardware | Elastic Beanstalk, Azure App Service |
| SaaS | Data and settings only | Everything else | Microsoft 365, Salesforce, Workday |
| FaaS / Serverless | Function code only | Infra, scaling, runtime | Lambda, Azure Functions, Cloud Run |
| CaaS | Containers and apps | Kubernetes, OS, hardware | EKS, AKS, GKE |
Go deeper
Related to this question
Learn chapter
Data Roles and Core Concepts
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.
Key term
Data
Data is raw, unprocessed information, like numbers, words, or measurements, that can be stored, processed, and analyzed by computers.
About these practice questions
Courseiva writes every DP-900 question from scratch — 820 in total, each with an explanation and a wrong-answer breakdown. None are copied from real exams or dumps. Learn why practice questions differ from exam dumps →
JA
Written by Johnson Ajibi, MSc IT Security
Senior Network & Security Engineer · founder of Courseiva
This DP-900 practice question is part of Courseiva's free Microsoft certification practice question bank. Courseiva provides original exam-style practice questions with explanations, topic-based practice, mock exams, readiness tracking, and study analytics to help learners prepare for the DP-900 exam.