DP-900 Describe an analytics workload on Azure Practice Question
An organization has a data lake that contains both structured and unstructured data. They need to catalog the data assets and enable data discovery for users. Which Azure service should they use?
⚠ Common exam trap
Many candidates confuse Azure Data Factory’s data movement and transformation capabilities with data cataloging, or they assume Azure Synapse Analytics includes a built-in catalog, when in fact Microsoft Purview is the dedicated service for data discovery and governance.
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
✓
Microsoft Purview
Microsoft Purview is a unified data governance service that helps you manage and govern your on-premises, multicloud, and software-as-a-service (SaaS) data. It provides automated data discovery, sensitive data classification, and end-to-end data lineage, making it the correct choice for cataloging both structured and unstructured data assets in a data lake and enabling data discovery for users.
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 Data Factory
Why it's wrong here
Azure Data Factory is a cloud-based data integration service used to orchestrate and automate data movement and transformation pipelines—such as copying data from a data lake to a SQL database or running ETL/ELT processes. While it connects to and moves metadata during pipeline execution, its core purpose is operational data integration, not maintaining a persistent, searchable catalog of data assets, business terms, or lineage that users can query and govern.
- ✓
Microsoft Purview
Why this is correct
Microsoft Purview is a unified data governance solution that provides a data map, automated data discovery, and classification of sensitive data across both cloud and on-premises sources. It enables organizations to build a searchable business glossary, assign owners, track end-to-end lineage, and manage data access policies, making it the correct service for cataloging a data lake that contains both structured and unstructured data.
- ✗
Azure Synapse Analytics
Why it's wrong here
Azure Synapse Analytics is a unified analytics platform that integrates data warehousing, big data processing, and data integration into a single service, allowing high-scale querying of data stored in a data lake or relational warehouses using serverless or dedicated SQL pools and Apache Spark. It works well for computing and analyzing the data, but it does not provide the centralized metadata cataloging, business glossary, classification, or policy management required for governance—those functions belong to a dedicated governance tool like Microsoft Purview.
- ✗
Azure Data Lake Storage
Why it's wrong here
Azure Data Lake Storage (ADLS) is a scalable, secure cloud storage service built on Azure Blob Storage that offers a hierarchical namespace to store massive volumes of raw, semi-structured, and structured data files. Although it is the underlying repository where a data lake may live, it only provides basic management capabilities like folders, ACLs, and lifecycle policies, and has no intrinsic ability to catalog, classify, or curate data assets for end-user discovery or compliance governance.
Go deeper
Related to this question
Learn chapter
Data Roles and Core Concepts
Key term
Unstructured data
Unstructured data is information that does not have a predefined data model or is not organized in a predefined manner, making it difficult for traditional databases to read and process.
Key term
Data governance
Data governance is the overall process of managing the availability, usability, integrity, and security of data used in an organization, based on internal standards and policies.
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Written by Johnson Ajibi, MSc IT Security
Senior Network & Security Engineer · founder of Courseiva
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