DP-900 Practice Question: Identify considerations for relational data on Azure
An e-commerce company runs a product inventory database on Azure SQL Database. During a flash sale, write transactions are slow because many read queries are running simultaneously and consuming resources. The company wants to isolate read workloads without modifying application code or database schemas. Which Azure SQL Database feature should they implement?
⚠ Common exam trap
Many exam-takers confuse read scale-out with geo-replication or failover groups, assuming any replica can offload reads, but only read scale-out provides a local read-only replica without requiring application code changes or cross-region 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
✓
Read scale-out
Read scale-out (B) is correct because it allows read-only queries to be offloaded to a read-only replica of the database, freeing up the primary replica for write transactions. This feature is built into Azure SQL Database at the Business Critical and Premium service tiers, and it requires no application code changes—just a connection string modification to use the `ApplicationIntent=ReadOnly` parameter. It directly addresses the performance bottleneck caused by concurrent read queries during the flash sale.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✗
Active geo-replication
Why it's wrong here
Active geo-replication creates a readable secondary replica in a different Azure region, which does not offload read traffic from the primary database in the same region; the scenario requires isolating read workloads within the same region without schema changes, which is achieved by a read-scale-out replica. It is tempting because geo-replication is commonly used for disaster recovery and can serve read-only queries, but it would be the correct choice only if the requirement were to distribute read traffic across geographically distant locations for latency reduction or regional failover.
- ✓
Read scale-out
Why this is correct
Read scale-out uses the built-in readable secondary replica of Azure SQL Database, which resides in the same region as the primary and is kept transactionally consistent through asynchronous replication. By setting the connection string's ApplicationIntent parameter to ReadOnly, read-only queries are automatically routed to this secondary, offloading CPU, IO, and memory pressure from the primary without requiring schema changes or application rewrites. This directly satisfies the scenario's requirements of isolating read workloads in the same region while leaving the existing database schema untouched.
- ✗
Auto-failover groups
Why it's wrong here
Auto-failover groups continuously replicate data to a secondary server in a paired region for high availability and automatic regional failure recovery; they are not designed to scale out reads within a single region. The group's secondary can accept read-only queries only if the partner server has read scale-out enabled, and even then it is a separate geographic replica, not a local workload isolator. Choosing this option would add multi-region failover complexity without addressing the immediate need to reduce contention on the primary, and it does require the secondary server to be provisioned as part of a failover group.
- ✗
Elastic pools
Why it's wrong here
Elastic pools allocate a shared pool of compute and storage resources among multiple databases on a single Azure SQL Database server, enabling cost-efficient resource sharing and per-database performance limits. However, they do not create any separate replica or alternate route for read queries; every query still goes to the same primary database engine. Therefore, pooling cannot separate read and write workloads within one database, and it would be an invalid answer to this scenario.
Go deeper
Related to this question
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Azure SQL Services
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.
Key term
Service
A service is a software component or system that performs a specific function and is available to be used by other programs or users over a network.
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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.