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Describe core data concepts

Practise Microsoft Azure Data Fundamentals DP-900 Describe core data concepts practice questions — original exam-style scenarios with answer choices, explanations, and analysis of common mistakes.

235 questions122 easy67 medium46 hard

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Describe core data concepts questions test whether you can apply the concept in context, not just recognise a definition.

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  • Ignoring why the wrong options are tempting.

Question index

All Describe core data concepts questions (235)

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1

A retail company stores three types of customer data: (1) a table with columns for CustomerID, Name, and Email; (2) product reviews as JSON documents with varying fields such as rating and comment; (3) product demonstration videos stored in MP4 format. Which of the following correctly classifies these data types in order from first to third?

Easy
2

A logistics company collects data from fleet sensors. Each sensor sends a JSON message containing the vehicle ID, timestamp, and a variable set of measurements such as engine temperature, tire pressure, and fuel level. The structure of the JSON message differs between sensor types and sometimes includes optional fields. How should this data be classified?

Easy
3

A company uses Azure Data Lake Storage Gen2 for a data lake. They implement a folder structure with access control lists (ACLs). A new data scientist needs to read data from a specific folder but not write to it. Which ACL permission should be assigned?

Hard
4

A company stores customer information in a SQL database with fixed columns (CustomerID, Name, Email). They also store scanned PDF contracts and product images in a file storage system. Which statement correctly describes the types of data mentioned?

Easy
5

Your organization uses Azure Data Lake Storage Gen2 as a data lake. You need to enforce data retention policies automatically, such as deleting files older than 90 days. Which Azure feature should you use?

Hard
6

A retail company captures real-time clickstream data from its website. They need to store this data for immediate analysis using KQL. Which Azure service should they use?

Easy
7

A retail company processes historical sales data in a nightly batch job that loads aggregated reports into a data warehouse. Additionally, the company analyzes live customer interactions from their website to provide real-time product recommendations. Which pair of terms correctly describes these two data processing approaches?

Easy
8

A social media application allows users to post updates and like posts. After a user clicks the like button, the like count must update immediately and be exactly the same for all users viewing the post. Which data consistency model best fits this requirement?

Easy
9

A marketing team needs to analyze customer sentiment from social media posts in real time. The solution must ingest a stream of tweets, perform sentiment analysis using a pre-built AI model, and store the results in a dashboard for immediate visualization. The team has limited coding experience and prefers a low-code/no-code approach. Which combination of Azure services should you recommend?

Easy
10

A company needs to store JSON documents that are frequently updated by multiple services. The solution must support indexing and querying by any property. Which Azure data service should they use?

Easy
11

A healthcare organization is planning a data analytics platform. They will ingest data from various sources: structured patient records from a relational database, semi-structured JSON logs from medical devices, and unstructured physician notes as plain text files. Which characteristic of big data describes the different formats of data being ingested?

Easy
12

Match each Azure data service to its primary purpose.

Medium
13

A company is designing a data solution for their e-commerce platform. They need to store product catalogs with varying attributes, support high-throughput read/write operations, and ensure low-latency access globally. Which Azure data store is most appropriate?

Medium
14

A bank processes a fund transfer transaction. The system debits $100 from Account A and then credits $100 to Account B. If the system crashes after debiting Account A but before crediting Account B, the database automatically reverts the debit. Which ACID property ensures this behavior?

Medium
15

Which TWO Azure services are primarily used for batch processing of large volumes of data? (Choose two.)

Hard
16

A retail company operates an e-commerce website that processes customer orders (insert, update, delete) throughout the day. The same company also runs reports on sales trends at the end of each quarter. Which type of data processing workload does the order processing represent?

Easy
17

A manufacturing company stores two types of data: (1) real-time sensor readings from production machines used to monitor current machine status, and (2) historical daily production summaries used by managers to identify trends over months. Which statement accurately describes these workloads?

Easy
18

A company wants to store JSON documents from IoT devices with low latency and high availability. Which Azure data store should they use?

Easy
19

Your organization is migrating on-premises SQL Server databases to Azure. The databases include a mission-critical OLTP system that requires high availability with automatic failover and a reporting database that is used for read-only queries. You need to choose the appropriate Azure SQL deployment options for each workload. The OLTP system must have a recovery point objective (RPO) of less than 5 seconds and a recovery time objective (RTO) of less than 30 seconds. The reporting database should be cost-effective and can tolerate up to 5 minutes of data loss. What should you recommend?

Medium
20

A financial database system ensures that once a transaction is committed, the data changes are permanently stored and will survive any subsequent system failure, such as a power outage or crash. Which property of ACID transactions does this describe?

Easy
21

A financial company needs to store transactional records where each record has a fixed set of attributes (TransactionID, Amount, Date, AccountID). The data must support complex queries and enforce referential integrity. Which type of data store is most appropriate?

Easy
22

A company stores product information such as product ID, name, price, and category in a relational database with rows and columns. This data is best described as:

Easy
23

A healthcare provider stores patient admission data in a relational database table with columns for PatientID, Name, and AdmissionDate. Progress notes are stored as free-text documents. Lab results are stored as XML files that contain varying fields depending on the test type. Which of the following correctly categorizes these three data types in order: relational table, progress notes, lab results?

Medium
24

A company stores customer orders in a relational database that handles many small transactions (inserts, updates, deletes) throughout the day. Separately, they maintain a data warehouse that is used for complex aggregations and historical trend analysis. Which statement correctly describes these two workloads?

Easy
25

A company stores customer orders. Each order has a unique order ID, customer ID, a list of items (each item contains product ID, quantity, and price), and an order date. They frequently query orders by customer ID and also need to filter by order date ranges. The data volume is high and schema flexibility is desired because items can vary in structure. Which type of data store is best suited for this scenario?

Medium
26

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?

Easy
27

Your company stores IoT sensor data in Azure Blob Storage. Data analysts need to query the data using SQL without moving it. Which Azure service should you use?

Medium
28

Which TWO data storage types are classified as structured data in Azure? (Choose two.)

Easy
29

A company stores customer names and addresses in a fixed-format file where each record has the same fields in the same order. This type of data is best described as:

Easy
30

Which TWO of the following are characteristics of structured data?

Easy
31

Which THREE of the following are characteristics of a data lake compared to a data warehouse?

Hard
32

A company updates a customer's address in a database. The update must ensure that all existing orders still reference a valid customer ID. The database checks the foreign key constraint and rejects the update if it would violate referential integrity. Which ACID property does this enforcement represent?

Medium
33

A company collects temperature readings from IoT sensors every second. Each reading includes a timestamp, sensor ID, and temperature value. The data is used for real-time monitoring and historical trend analysis. Which type of data is this most likely classified as?

Medium
34

A company wants to store historical sales data for long-term analysis. The data is accessed infrequently but must be retained for 7 years. Which Azure storage tier minimizes cost while meeting these requirements?

Easy
35

A financial services company is evaluating distributed NoSQL databases for a new application that must remain fully available even during network partitions. The application can tolerate stale reads for some types of queries. Which statement accurately describes the trade-off described by the CAP theorem in this context?

Hard
36

A company stores customer data in three formats: a relational table with fixed columns for CustomerID, Name, and Email; product reviews stored as JSON documents with varying fields such as rating and comment; and product demonstration videos in MP4 format. Which of the following correctly lists these data types from most structured to least structured?

Easy
37

Refer to the exhibit. You are analyzing a message from an IoT device captured in Azure Event Hubs. The message contains system properties indicating the device ID and authentication method. You need to route messages from device-01 to a separate storage container for compliance. Which property should you use in a Stream Analytics query to filter messages?

Hard
38

Refer to the exhibit. You are reviewing an Azure Resource Manager template for a Blob Storage container named 'sales'. The container has versioning enabled. A developer accidentally overwrites a blob. What is the simplest way to recover the previous version?

Medium
39

A data engineering team at a logistics company handles two distinct data processing workloads. The first workload ingests GPS data from delivery trucks every 10 seconds and updates a dashboard showing real-time vehicle locations. The second workload processes monthly CSV files of completed deliveries to generate reports on delivery times and route efficiency. Which statement correctly identifies these workloads?

Medium
40

You need to store semi-structured JSON documents from a web application in Azure. The data will be accessed by a key/value lookup. Which Azure data store should you use?

Easy
41

Drag and drop the steps to create an Azure Data Lake Storage Gen2 account in the correct order.

Medium
42

You are a data architect at a global retail company. The company has an Azure Data Lake Storage Gen2 account that stores petabytes of clickstream data. They need to provide near real-time analytics dashboards for regional managers. The data arrives in batches every 5 minutes. Currently, they use Azure Databricks to transform the data and load it into Azure Synapse Analytics, but the dashboards show data that is 30 minutes old. The business requires dashboards to reflect data within 10 minutes of ingestion. You propose a new solution. Which approach should you recommend?

Hard
43

Your organization stores sensitive financial data in Azure SQL Database. You need to audit all SELECT operations on the 'Transactions' table and alert the security team when a user outside the finance department queries the table. Which feature should you use?

Hard
44

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?

Easy
45

You need to design a real-time dashboard that displays the number of orders placed in the last hour from an e-commerce application. The application writes orders to Azure Event Hubs. Which Azure service should you use to aggregate the data and serve the dashboard with minimal latency?

Medium
46

The exhibit shows a SQL query run against Azure SQL Database. What is the purpose of the HAVING clause in this query?

Medium
47

A logistics company stores shipment tracking data. The shipment ID, destination, and weight are stored in a fixed-schema database table. The shipment's route history is stored as a JSON document where each document can have different fields depending on the route events recorded. Which classification of data best describes the route history data?

Easy
48

A company uses Azure Cosmos DB for a globally distributed application. They need to ensure low-latency reads and writes for users in multiple regions. Which consistency level provides the strongest guarantees without sacrificing availability?

Easy
49

A data analyst needs to create interactive dashboards and reports from data stored in Azure Synapse Analytics. Which tool should they use?

Easy
50

A company has a database that processes millions of small credit card transactions per second for payment authorization. They also need to run complex reports that aggregate transaction data over months to detect fraud patterns. Which type of workload describes the payment authorization process?

Medium
51

A data analyst needs to visualize sales data from Azure SQL Database in real-time dashboards. Which tool should they use to create interactive reports?

Easy
52

A logistics company tracks package deliveries. When a package is scanned at a distribution center, the system immediately updates the delivery status in a database so customers can see the live tracking information. At the end of each day, the company runs a job that aggregates all delivery status changes into a report for operational analysis. Which of the following best describes these two data processing workloads?

Medium
53

You are designing a batch processing pipeline that runs nightly to transform CSV files from an FTP server into Parquet files in Azure Data Lake Storage. Which Azure service should you use to orchestrate the pipeline?

Medium
54

A company needs to store semi-structured data from IoT devices, including temperature readings and device status. The data will be queried by time range and device ID. Which Azure data service is most cost-effective for this use case?

Easy
55

A company stores customer orders in a relational database. The database enforces rules that every order must have a unique order number and must be linked to an existing customer record. This enforcement of rules to ensure accuracy and consistency is an example of which data concept?

Easy
56

A company stores customer order data in a relational database table with columns like OrderID, CustomerID, and OrderDate. They also store product images as JPEG files, and customer feedback as JSON documents with varying fields. Which of the following correctly orders these data types from most structured to least structured?

Easy
57

A bank processes a fund transfer that involves deducting money from one account and crediting it to another. The system ensures that both operations succeed together or, if any part fails, the entire transaction is rolled back, leaving both accounts unchanged. Which ACID property does this scenario primarily guarantee?

Medium
58

A company uses Azure SQL Database and wants to implement row-level security so that sales managers can only see data for their own region. Which feature should they use?

Hard
59

You need to store semi-structured JSON data from a web application and query it using SQL-like syntax. The solution must support high throughput with low latency. Which Azure data store should you use?

Medium
60

A bank processes individual customer transactions in real-time to update account balances and also runs a nightly job that aggregates all daily transactions into summary reports for management. Which of the following best describes these two processing workloads?

Medium
61

A database administrator is explaining to a colleague that a database transaction must ensure that either all operations within it succeed or none of them take effect. Which ACID property is being described?

Easy
62

A research team needs to store thousands of PDF reports that vary in length and structure. The storage solution must allow flexible schema and support access from multiple programming languages via HTTP. Which data storage category best describes these reports?

Easy
63

A hospital collects patient data from multiple sources. Source A stores patient vitals as a continuous stream of readings from wearable devices. Source B stores historical medical records in a relational database with fixed columns (PatientID, Diagnosis, AdmissionDate). Source C stores doctor's notes as unstructured text files. Which statement correctly describes the structure of data from these sources?

Medium
64

A company is building a data lake and collects data from three sources: (1) a relational database exporting CSV files with fixed columns for customer records, (2) API responses stored as JSON files with varying fields for product reviews, and (3) scanned handwritten notes stored as TIFF images. Which statement correctly categorizes these data by structure type?

Hard
65

A company needs to store JSON documents that require flexible schema and low-latency access globally. Which Azure data service should they use?

Easy
66

A company stores customer transaction data in Azure Blob Storage. They need to query the data using SQL-based tools without moving the data. Which Azure service should they use?

Easy
67

You are analyzing the results of a KQL query in Azure Data Explorer. What does this query return?

Easy
68

A company stores customer data in a relational database with columns like CustomerID, Name, and Email. They also store product images as JPEG files in Azure Blob Storage, and customer feedback as JSON documents that contain varying fields such as rating, comments, and optional metadata. Which of the following correctly orders these data types from most structured to least structured?

Medium
69

A global social media application allows users to post updates and 'like' posts. The application is designed to prioritize availability and partition tolerance over strong consistency. As a result, when a user likes a post, the like count may not be immediately visible to all users, but it will eventually become consistent across all regions. Which consistency model does this application follow?

Hard
70

A company operates an online store that processes customer orders. When a customer places an order, the system must immediately reduce the inventory count for the purchased items and record the order details. At the end of each month, the company runs reports that aggregate sales data over the past month to analyze trends. Which type of data processing workload best describes the order placement activity?

Easy
71

A consulting firm collects client information in two forms: a spreadsheet with columns for Name, Address, and Phone Number, and audio recordings of client meetings. Which of the following statements correctly categorizes these data types?

Easy
72

A healthcare organization stores patient records in Azure Blob Storage and must comply with data retention policies that require deleting records after 7 years. They also need to prevent any modification or deletion of records before the retention period ends. Which Azure feature should they use?

Hard
73

A company is designing a data solution for a retail application. The solution must support real-time analytics on streaming sales data, and also provide historical reports for business intelligence. Which TWO data processing models should be combined to meet these requirements?

Medium
74

Which TWO of the following are characteristics of structured data?

Easy
75

A retail company collects raw clickstream data from its website as JSON files. Data scientists need to run exploratory analytics on this raw data without a predefined schema. BI analysts also need to generate weekly sales reports from aggregated transactional data stored in a relational format. Which combination of data storage approaches best meets these needs?

Easy
76

A data engineer needs to load 500 GB of CSV files from an on-premises server into Azure Data Lake Storage Gen2 daily. The data must be transferred securely over the internet. Which Azure tool should they use?

Medium
77

Your organization uses Azure Cosmos DB for a real-time inventory application. The data includes a container with items that have a `category` property. The operations team frequently queries for all items in a specific category. To optimize query performance and minimize request unit (RU) consumption, you decide to implement a materialized view. Which Azure Cosmos DB feature should you use to achieve this?

Medium
78

A company stores customer data in a relational table with columns CustomerID, FullName, and Email. They also store product descriptions as JSON documents with varying fields, and product images as JPEG files. Which of the following correctly classifies these data types from most structured to least structured?

Easy
79

Refer to the exhibit. You are designing a fact table for a data warehouse. The table will store sales transactions with daily granularity. Which column would be most appropriate as the distribution column in a hash-distributed table in Azure Synapse Analytics?

Easy
80

A company receives customer order data from its online store in a CSV file. Each line contains fields like OrderID, CustomerName, Product, Quantity, and OrderDate. This data is best described as:

Easy
81

A company wants to store JSON documents that need to be queried with high throughput and low latency globally. Which Azure data service is most appropriate?

Easy
82

Match each Azure data migration tool to its use case.

Medium
83

A financial analytics company has two distinct data processing workloads. The first workload ingests real-time stock trade data from a message queue, calculates moving averages every minute, and updates a dashboard for traders. The second workload receives daily CSV files containing end-of-day trade summaries, transforms them using Python scripts, and loads the results into a data warehouse for monthly reporting. Which statement correctly characterizes these workloads?

Hard
84

Your organization uses Microsoft Fabric to build a data lakehouse. Data engineers need to transform data using Spark and store results in Delta Lake format. Which Fabric component should they use?

Medium
85

You need to design a data storage solution for a global e-commerce application that must support ACID transactions and require minimal latency for point lookups by a unique key. Which Azure data service should you use?

Medium
86

A team is designing a data pipeline to process streaming sensor data from IoT devices. The data must be ingested, transformed in real time, and stored in a time-series database. Which combination of Azure services should they use?

Medium
87

A retail company stores customer transaction data in a relational database. Each transaction is recorded with a fixed schema including TransactionID, CustomerID, ProductID, Quantity, and TotalAmount. Which type of data does this represent?

Easy
88

Your company, Contoso Ltd., operates a global e-commerce platform. The data engineering team ingests over 10 TB of raw clickstream data daily into Azure Data Lake Storage Gen2. The data is partitioned by date and hour. Business analysts need to query this data using Azure Synapse Serverless SQL to generate daily sales reports. However, the reports are taking over 30 minutes to run, and the team needs to improve query performance without moving data to a dedicated SQL pool. You are asked to recommend a solution. Which action should you take?

Hard
89

Your team uses Azure SQL Database and wants to implement row-level security (RLS) to restrict access to sales data by region. Which type of data workload characteristic does RLS primarily address?

Hard
90

A company stores an employee database in a relational database. The Employees table includes columns: EmployeeID (integer), FirstName (text), LastName (text), HireDate (date), and a column called Photo which stores the employee's photo as a binary large object (BLOB). Which statement best describes the data types in this table?

Easy
91

Which THREE are characteristics of structured data? (Choose three.)

Medium
92

A company stores customer information in a SQL database table with columns: CustomerID, FirstName, LastName, Email, SignupDate. They also store product images as JPEG files in Azure Blob Storage. Which statement correctly describes the types of data involved?

Easy
93

You are implementing a data pipeline that ingests millions of events per second from IoT devices. The pipeline must tolerate failures and guarantee exactly-once processing. Which Azure service should you use to ingest the events?

Hard
94

Refer to the exhibit. A data engineer needs to query the orders.csv file using Azure Synapse Serverless SQL. What is the most efficient way to access this data?

Medium
95

A healthcare organization stores patient records in a relational database table with fixed columns for PatientID, Name, and DateOfBirth. Additionally, they store clinical notes as free-form text files for each patient visit. Which statement correctly classifies these data types?

Easy
96

A company processes sales transactions in real-time from a retail website. Each transaction is recorded as a row in a relational database. Additionally, the company stores weekly sales reports as PDF files. Which statement correctly describes these data types?

Easy
97

You need to choose a data store for a mobile app that requires real-time synchronization of user preferences across devices. The data is small per user and key-value oriented. Which Azure service is most appropriate?

Medium
98

In a banking application, a transaction transfers $100 from Account A to Account B. The system deducts $100 from Account A successfully, but due to a network error, the credit to Account B fails. The application rolls back the deduction from Account A, ensuring that neither account is affected. Which ACID property is being enforced?

Medium
99

A banking system processes a money transfer between two accounts. The system is designed so that after the transaction is committed, the results are permanently saved and survive any subsequent system failure, such as a power outage. Which ACID property ensures this behavior?

Easy
100

A company stores customer names, addresses, and order history. They need to perform complex queries that join customer and order data. Which type of data store is most appropriate for this scenario?

Easy
101

Refer to the exhibit. You are reviewing an ARM template for a new storage account. The storage account will store data that must be accessible from any Azure region and must be highly durable. Which change should you make to the template?

Medium
102

A healthcare application stores patient medical history in a relational database. The system must ensure that after a transaction updates multiple records (e.g., diagnosis and medication), all changes are saved or none are saved. This property is best described as:

Hard
103

Which THREE of the following are valid Azure data storage services? (Choose three.)

Hard
104

A retail company stores product information in a relational database table with fixed columns: ProductID (integer), Name (string), Price (decimal). They also store customer reviews as JSON documents where each review may contain different fields such as rating, comment, and optional images. Additionally, they store product images as JPEG files in Azure Blob Storage. Which of the following correctly classifies these data types from most structured to least structured?

Easy
105

Refer to the exhibit. You are deploying an Azure Storage account. The JSON snippet represents a template parameter. What does the 'isHnsEnabled' property enable?

Easy
106

Which TWO of the following are common characteristics of a NoSQL database?

Medium
107

Your organization uses Azure SQL Database and needs to ensure that all customer data is encrypted at rest and in transit with minimal administrative overhead. Which solution should you recommend?

Medium
108

A company stores employee records in a database. Each employee record contains an EmployeeID (unique), Name, Department, and HireDate. The EmployeeID is used to uniquely identify each employee. Which data concept does the EmployeeID represent?

Easy
109

Refer to the exhibit. You are reviewing an ARM template for an Azure SQL Database deployment. The database must support a read-only workload that requires low latency. The current configuration uses General Purpose tier with 4 vCores. What is the most significant performance improvement you can make without changing the tier?

Hard
110

A retail company collects data from online transactions including order ID, customer details, product IDs, quantities, and timestamps. The data is stored in a relational database and used for order processing and inventory management. Which characteristic of this data makes it structured?

Easy
111

You need to design a data storage solution for an e-commerce platform that requires ACID transactions for order processing and high availability across regions. Which Azure service meets these requirements?

Medium
112

A startup is building a mobile app that allows users to share short text updates. Each update includes a user ID, timestamp, and message text. The development team expects rapid growth and needs a storage solution that can scale horizontally, handle high write throughput, and provide low-latency reads globally. Which Azure data service is most appropriate?

Easy
113

A company collects data from multiple sources: IoT sensor streams, social media feeds, and CSV files from legacy systems. They want to store all this data in its original format without any transformation, so that data scientists can later apply machine learning models or run ad-hoc queries. Which data storage pattern best describes this approach?

Easy
114

A social media company stores user profiles as JSON documents where each profile may have different attributes (e.g., some profiles include 'education' while others include 'work history'). The company also stores user-generated posts in a relational database table with fixed columns (PostID, UserID, Content, Timestamp). Which of the following best describes the data types used for user profiles and user posts?

Medium
115

A retail company stores product inventory data in a fixed-schema table with columns for ProductID, ProductName, QuantityInStock, and ReorderLevel. How should this data be classified?

Easy
116

Match each ACID property with its correct description. Properties: - Atomicity - Consistency - Isolation - Durability Descriptions: 1. Transactions appear to execute one after the other, even if they are concurrent. 2. Once a transaction is committed, the changes are permanently saved and survive failures. 3. A transaction either completes fully or is rolled back entirely. 4. A transaction brings the database from one valid state to another, obeying all rules. Which option correctly maps each property to its description?

Hard
117

You design a data solution for an e-commerce platform. Transactional data must be stored with ACID compliance for order processing, while clickstream data from the website will be used for analytics. Which combination of Azure data services best meets these needs?

Medium
118

A healthcare company stores patient records in a relational database with fixed columns (PatientID, Name, DOB, BloodType). Medical images such as X-rays are stored as DICOM files. Clinical notes are stored as free-text documents. Which of the following correctly classifies these data types from most structured to least structured?

Easy
119

An e-commerce company runs a data pipeline that reads all orders from the previous hour, aggregates total sales per product category, and writes the results to a reporting database. The pipeline executes at the start of every hour. Which type of data processing workload does this pipeline represent?

Medium
120

A company wants to run complex analytics queries across petabytes of data stored in Azure Data Lake Storage. They need a serverless option that supports T-SQL. Which Azure service should they use?

Easy
121

A car manufacturing company has two data processing systems: one system processes real-time sensor data from assembly lines to immediately detect equipment failures, and another system processes historical production records to generate monthly efficiency reports. Which two types of data processing workloads best describe these systems?

Easy
122

You are designing a data pipeline that ingests sales transactions from an on-premises SQL Server database into Azure Synapse Analytics for reporting. The data must be processed incrementally every hour with minimal latency. Which Azure service should you use to orchestrate the pipeline?

Medium
123

A manufacturing company collects sensor data from equipment on the factory floor. The data is generated continuously and must be processed immediately to detect anomalies and trigger alerts. Which type of data processing workload best describes this scenario?

Easy
124

A database system must ensure that when a transfer of funds between two accounts is processed, if the system crashes after debiting the first account but before crediting the second, the database automatically undoes the debit. This property is best described as:

Medium
125

A marketing company collects data from social media feeds including text posts, images, and videos. The data arrives in various formats with no fixed structure or schema. This type of data is best described as:

Easy
126

A company collects data from three sources: Source A: Customer records from a relational database with fixed columns (CustomerID, Name, Address). Source B: Social media posts in JSON format with varying fields (e.g., some posts have 'likes', others have 'shares'). Source C: Handwritten notes saved as scanned images in TIFF format. Which statement correctly categorizes the data by structure?

Easy
127

Your team is migrating a data warehouse to Azure Synapse Analytics. You need to ensure that the data model supports both historical trend analysis and current-day reporting with minimal storage redundancy. Which table design pattern should you use?

Easy
128

Which classification of data describes information that has a fixed schema and is organized into rows and columns, such as data found in a relational database table?

Easy
129

A healthcare organization needs to store patient records that must be immutable and cannot be modified or deleted for 7 years due to regulatory compliance. Which Azure feature should they use?

Hard
130

A retail company wants to run real-time analytics on streaming clickstream data from their website. Which Azure service should they use to ingest and process the data?

Medium
131

A healthcare organization stores patient medical records in a relational database with columns such as PatientID, Name, and DateOfBirth. They also store radiology images as DICOM files in Azure Blob Storage. Which statement correctly classifies these data types?

Easy
132

A data analyst needs to combine sales data from Azure SQL Database and inventory data from Azure Cosmos DB into a single Power BI report. Which Power BI feature should they use?

Medium
133

A data analyst needs to query a large dataset stored in Azure Blob Storage using serverless SQL pool in Azure Synapse Analytics. Which data format should they use to minimize storage costs while still supporting efficient querying?

Easy
134

Your team is building a real-time dashboard for monitoring website traffic. The data source is streaming click events from Azure Event Hubs. The dashboard must update within seconds. Which Azure service should you use to process the stream?

Medium
135

A healthcare organization must store patient health records for 7 years to meet regulatory requirements. After 7 years, data must be deleted immediately. They use Azure Blob Storage. Which policy should they implement?

Hard
136

An e-commerce application processes customer orders. When an order is placed, the system must decrement the inventory count and process the payment. The application ensures that either both operations complete successfully or both are rolled back if any error occurs. Which database property does this guarantee?

Medium
137

A company stores three types of data: 1) Customer orders in a SQL table with fixed columns for OrderID, CustomerID, and OrderDate. 2) Product reviews in XML files where each file contains varying tags such as <rating> and <comment>. 3) Video files of product demonstrations. Which of the following correctly classifies these data types in order from first to third?

Easy
138

A data analyst receives a dataset containing customer order details stored in a CSV file, a JSON file with product reviews, and a folder of JPEG images of products. Which of the following correctly categorizes these data types from most structured to least structured?

Easy
139

A company's data engineering team uses Azure Data Factory to orchestrate a pipeline that ingests data from Azure Blob Storage, transforms it using Azure Databricks, and loads it into Azure Synapse Dedicated SQL Pool. The pipeline fails intermittently due to transient errors. Which pattern should they implement to improve reliability?

Hard
140

A retail company operates an online store. The store processes each customer's order immediately upon submission, updating inventory and payment records in real-time. Additionally, the company's business analysts run weekly reports that aggregate sales data over the past month to identify trends. Which of the following correctly describes the two workload types represented in this scenario?

Easy
141

A retail company uses Azure SQL Database to store transactional data. They need to ensure that reporting queries do not impact the performance of the transactional workload. Which solution should you recommend?

Hard
142

A retail company uses a point-of-sale (POS) system that records each sales transaction in a database. Each transaction involves reading the current inventory, updating the stock level, and recording the sale. The database must ensure that concurrent transactions do not interfere with each other, so that one transaction does not see partially updated data from another. Which property of a database transaction ensures this isolation?

Easy
143

A company stores customer contact information in a table with columns for CustomerID, Name, Email, and Phone. They also store customer support chat transcripts as plain text files. Which of the following correctly classifies these data types?

Easy
144

A marketing team needs to analyze customer purchase history data stored in Azure SQL Database. They want to create interactive dashboards with drill-down capabilities. Which Microsoft tool should they use?

Medium
145

The exhibit shows a KQL query in Azure Data Explorer. What is the output of this query?

Easy
146

A company stores customer orders in a database. Each order has an OrderID (integer), CustomerName (text), OrderDate (date), and a JSON column for order details that contains varying fields such as discount codes or gift messages. Which statement best describes the data types in this table?

Easy
147

The exhibit shows a Kusto Query Language (KQL) query run in Azure Data Explorer. What is the output of this query?

Hard
148

A banking application processes a funds transfer transaction consisting of two steps: debit $100 from Account A and credit $100 to Account B. If the system crashes after debiting Account A but before crediting Account B, the database automatically reverts the debit, restoring Account A to its original balance. Which ACID property guarantees this behavior?

Hard
149

You are designing a data lake architecture for a large enterprise. You need to organize data into zones (raw, curated, and analytics) and enforce data lineage tracking. Which Azure service should you use to catalog and govern the data?

Hard
150

Your organization wants to run SQL queries on data stored in Azure Blob Storage without moving the data. Which Azure service supports this?

Easy
151

A company stores customer information in a table with columns CustomerID, Name, Address, and PhoneNumber. Every row has values for all these columns, and the data follows a fixed schema. Which type of data does this represent?

Easy
152

A company stores employee records in a relational database table with columns EmployeeID, FirstName, LastName, Department. They also store employee handbooks as PDF files, and customer feedback as XML documents. Which of the following correctly classifies these data types?

Easy
153

A company wants to provide self-service analytics to business users who need to create reports and dashboards from data in Azure Synapse Analytics. Which tool should you recommend?

Easy
154

Refer to the exhibit. The JSON shows an Azure Policy definition. Which effect should be used to proactively prevent creation of storage accounts without encryption?

Hard
155

You are designing a data solution for a retail company that needs to store transactional data (orders, payments) with strong consistency and support for complex joins. The data volume is moderate but expected to grow. Which Azure service should you choose?

Medium
156

A bank processes online fund transfers. Each transaction must ensure that either both the debit from the sender's account and the credit to the receiver's account occur, or if any part fails, the entire transaction is rolled back. Which ACID property does this guarantee?

Easy
157

A company maintains a database of customer orders that are updated frequently. They also store aggregated monthly sales reports that are generated once and then only read. Which statement correctly distinguishes these two types of data workloads?

Easy
158

A logistics company collects sensor data from delivery trucks. Each sensor sends a JSON message that includes a fixed set of core fields (truck ID, timestamp) but also includes optional fields such as temperature, humidity, and engine diagnostics depending on the sensor type. The JSON structure varies between messages. How should this data be classified?

Medium
159

A global e-commerce platform uses a combination of relational and NoSQL databases. The order management system requires ACID transactions across multiple tables (Orders, OrderItems, Inventory). The product catalog uses a flexible schema to accommodate varying product attributes and is read-heavy. The session store requires low-latency key-value lookups with eventual consistency. Which of the following pairings of data stores best matches these requirements?

Hard
160

A data analyst needs to create interactive dashboards that display real-time data from Azure SQL Database. Which Microsoft tool should they use?

Medium
161

A data engineer is classifying data types collected from three sources for a data lake. Source 1: Customer records from a SQL database exported as CSV files with fixed columns (CustomerID, Name, Address). Source 2: Product reviews obtained via API as JSON documents with varying fields (e.g., some reviews include 'rating' and 'verified_purchase', others include 'comment'). Source 3: Scanned handwritten order forms saved as TIFF images. Which statement correctly categorizes these data by structure?

Easy
162

A company stores customer data in a SQL table with fixed columns (CustomerID, Name, Email, SignupDate). They also store product images as JPEG files and application logs as JSON documents. Which of the following correctly classifies each data type?

Easy
163

A hospital stores patient records. Each record includes a PatientID (integer), Name (text), DateOfBirth (date), and MRI scan images (binary files). Which classification best describes the MRI scan images?

Easy
164

Your organization has a large dataset of customer transactions stored in Azure Blob Storage as CSV files. You need to run ad-hoc SQL queries on this data without loading it into a database. Which Azure service should you use?

Easy
165

You need to choose a data storage solution for a global e-commerce platform that requires single-digit millisecond read and write latencies across multiple regions. The data is semi-structured and includes user profiles and product catalogs. Which Azure service should you use?

Medium
166

You need to query data stored in Azure Cosmos DB for NoSQL using SQL-like syntax. Which feature should you use?

Easy
167

Refer to the exhibit. You are configuring a custom role in Azure RBAC for a team that needs to read and list blobs in a storage account. The JSON snippet shows the permissions assigned. After assigning this role to a user, they report they cannot see the storage account in the Azure portal. What is the most likely cause?

Hard
168

Your company is implementing a data governance solution using Microsoft Purview. The data catalog must automatically scan and classify sensitive data in Azure SQL Database, Azure Synapse Analytics, and Amazon S3. The company uses Microsoft Entra ID for identity management. You need to ensure that the Purview managed identity can authenticate to these data sources. Which authentication method should you configure for the Amazon S3 connection?

Easy
169

A bank's online transaction processing system records every withdrawal and deposit in a database. The bank also runs a monthly report that summarizes total transactions per customer. Which statement correctly identifies these two workloads?

Easy
170

A retail company stores product inventory data in a SQL database, customer reviews as JSON files, and product images as JPEG files. Which of the following accurately describes the types of data stored?

Easy
171

A social media platform stores user posts as JSON documents. Each document contains text content, image URLs, timestamps, and user tags. The structure is consistent for most fields, but users can add custom key-value pairs. How should this data be classified?

Easy
172

A company stores customer names and addresses in a relational table, product descriptions as JSON files, and product images as JPEG files. Which of the following correctly classifies these data types from most structured to least structured?

Easy
173

A retail company uploads daily sales data from all stores to Azure Blob Storage at midnight. They then run a series of data transformations using Azure Data Factory on a scheduled trigger at 2:00 AM. This processing pattern is best described as:

Medium
174

Match each Azure Cosmos DB API to its supported data model.

Medium
175

A company stores customer data in a relational table with fixed columns: CustomerID (integer), FirstName (string), LastName (string), Email (string). They also store product images as JPEG files in Azure Blob Storage, and customer feedback as JSON documents where each document may contain fields such as rating, comment, and optional metadata. Which of the following correctly classifies these data types?

Easy
176

Your company has a data lake in Azure Data Lake Storage Gen2 containing terabytes of parquet files. Data scientists need to explore and prepare this data using Python and SQL. They want to use a collaborative notebook environment that integrates with Git for version control. The solution should automatically scale compute resources based on workload demand and minimize management overhead. Which Azure service should you use?

Hard
177

Drag and drop the steps to create an Azure SQL Database in the correct order.

Medium
178

A retail company uses Azure SQL Database to store customer transactions. They need to analyze sales trends over time. Which Azure service should they use to build interactive dashboards and reports without moving data out of Azure?

Medium
179

A logistics company ingests GPS coordinates from delivery trucks in real-time to update a live tracking dashboard. They also run a nightly job to aggregate the day's deliveries into a report stored in Azure SQL Database. Which statement correctly describes the data processing types used for these two workloads?

Easy
180

A data scientist needs to analyze historical sales data to identify yearly trends. They run SQL queries that aggregate millions of rows. No new data is being added during analysis. Which type of data processing workload does this represent?

Easy
181

You are reviewing a Data Factory mapping data flow definition. What is the primary purpose of this data flow?

Medium
182

You are designing a data solution for a healthcare application that requires ACID transactions for patient records and needs to run complex analytics queries. Which combination of Azure services should you recommend?

Hard
183

A retail company receives real-time data from IoT sensors in its warehouses. Each sensor sends a JSON payload containing a device ID, timestamp, and temperature reading. A data engineer needs to classify this data for storage planning. Which data type best describes the JSON payload?

Easy
184

Refer to the exhibit. You are analyzing a Kusto query in Azure Data Explorer. The query is intended to return the top 5 event types that caused the most property damage in Florida. However, the query returns an error. What is the most likely cause?

Hard
185

A company is evaluating Azure database services for two different workloads. Workload A processes high-volume, low-latency transactions such as order entry and payment processing, where each transaction updates a few rows. Workload B involves running complex aggregations on terabytes of historical sales data to generate monthly business intelligence reports. Which Azure service is best suited for each workload?

Easy
186

A company stores IoT sensor data in Azure Blob Storage. Data scientists need to query the data using SQL without moving it to another store. Which Azure service should they use?

Medium
187

A company uses Azure Data Lake Storage Gen2 for a data lake. They need to ensure that only authorized users can access files and that access is audited. Which two Azure services should they combine? (Choose two options that together form the solution.)

Hard
188

Your company uses Azure SQL Database and needs to ensure that transactions are durable even if the database instance fails. Which feature should you enable?

Medium
189

A retail company stores data about their products in different formats. Product ID and price are stored in a relational database table. Product descriptions are stored as plain text files. Product images are stored as JPEG files. Which of the following best categorizes these data types in order?

Easy
190

A company stores customer data in a relational table with fixed columns: CustomerID (integer), FirstName (string), LastName (string), Email (string). They also store product images as JPEG files, and customer feedback as JSON documents that may contain varying fields such as rating, comment, and optional metadata. Which of the following correctly orders these data types from most structured to least structured?

Hard
191

An organization uses Azure SQL Database and needs to maintain a copy of the database for read-only reporting without affecting the production workload. Which feature should they use?

Easy
192

Which TWO Azure services are primarily used for data integration and orchestration?

Medium
193

You are reviewing an ARM template for an Azure Storage account. The container named 'data' is created with public access set to 'None'. What is the primary benefit of this configuration?

Hard
194

Your company is designing a data solution for IoT sensor data that arrives in high volume and must be stored for long-term analytics. The data is append-only and rarely updated. You need to choose a storage solution that balances cost and query performance for historical analysis. Which Azure data store should you recommend?

Hard
195

A hospital collects patient vital signs every minute using IoT sensors. Each reading contains a timestamp, patient ID, heart rate, blood pressure, and temperature. This data is ingested continuously for real-time monitoring and alerting. Which type of data workload does this scenario best represent?

Easy
196

A database system ensures that a transaction either completes fully and all changes are applied, or it is completely rolled back and no partial changes are saved. Which property of ACID transactions does this describe?

Easy
197

A retail company captures real-time sensor data from IoT devices to detect anomalies and predict equipment failures. The data must be processed immediately as it arrives. Which type of data processing workload best describes this scenario?

Medium
198

A social media application displays the number of posts each user has created. After a user submits a new post, the count must reflect the update across all servers within a few seconds. Which data consistency model best describes this requirement?

Easy
199

A retail company processes customer orders throughout the day. Each order involves inserting a new record into a database table, updating inventory counts, and deleting temporary cart data. At the end of each week, the company runs a query that aggregates all orders by product category and region to generate a sales report. Which of the following best describes these two workloads?

Easy
200

A data engineer needs to load data from an on-premises SQL Server database to Azure Synapse Analytics every hour with minimal latency. Which Azure service should they use?

Easy
201

A company stores customer data in a SQL Server database table with columns: CustomerID (integer), Name (varchar), Email (varchar), SignupDate (date). All rows adhere to this schema. Which type of data does this represent?

Easy
202

A company ingests streaming data from social media feeds and needs to process and analyze the data in real time. Which Azure service should they use to capture the stream?

Easy
203

A company stores customer data in a SQL Server table with fixed columns (CustomerID, Name, Email, SignupDate). The company also stores application logs as JSON documents and marketing images as JPEG files. Which data type describes the customer data?

Easy
204

A retail company maintains a database of customer information including CustomerID, Name, Address, and Phone. Each record follows the same fixed schema. This type of data is best described as:

Easy
205

A data file contains records for customer orders. Each record has fields for OrderID, CustomerID, and OrderDate that are present in every record. However, some records include an optional 'DiscountCode' field, and others include an optional 'GiftMessage' field. The file is stored in JSON format. Which type of data does this file represent?

Easy
206

Your company stores customer data in Azure Blob Storage. To comply with data residency regulations, you must ensure data is replicated within the same Azure region. Which replication option should you choose?

Medium
207

A ride-sharing company processes trip requests from customers. Each trip is recorded as a single transaction that updates the driver's status, calculates the fare, and logs the ride. At the end of each month, the company runs reports that aggregate millions of trips to determine average wait times and revenue per driver. Which pair of terms best describes these two distinct workloads?

Easy
208

A company stores customer records in a relational database table with fixed columns (CustomerID, Name, Email). They also store product reviews as JSON documents that may contain varying fields such as Rating, Comment, and optional Tags. Additionally, they store product images as JPEG files. Which of the following correctly orders these data types from most structured to least structured?

Easy
209

A data engineer needs to implement a solution that provides near real-time analytics on clickstream data. The data arrives as JSON events and must be queryable with sub-second latency using SQL-like queries. The solution should minimize operational overhead. Which Azure service should they use?

Hard
210

A retail chain collects sales data from all its stores at the end of each business day by exporting CSV files from each store's database. The data is then combined and analyzed to generate daily sales reports. Which type of data processing does this describe?

Easy
211

A company wants to run SQL queries on data stored in Azure Cosmos DB for NoSQL. Which API should they use?

Easy
212

Which TWO of the following are correct descriptions of data processing workloads in Azure?

Medium
213

The exhibit shows a T-SQL query against an Azure SQL Database. What is the purpose of the HAVING clause in this query?

Medium
214

A healthcare application stores patient vital signs readings. Each reading is a JSON document with fields: PatientID, Timestamp, HeartRate, BloodPressure (systolic and diastolic). The application frequently queries for all readings of a specific patient within a time range, and the schema varies occasionally (e.g., new optional fields are added). How should this data be classified?

Medium
215

Your organization has a data warehouse in Azure Synapse Analytics. You need to load data from Azure Blob Storage daily, transforming it using a data flow. Which Azure service should you use for the ETL process?

Hard
216

A company stores customer data in a relational database. The database design includes a rule that every order must be associated with a valid customer ID that exists in the Customers table. This rule is an example of which data concept?

Medium
217

A company stores customer transaction data in Azure Blob Storage. The data is rarely accessed after 30 days, but must be retained for 7 years for compliance. Which access tier minimizes storage cost while meeting the retention requirement?

Medium
218

A financial services company stores account balances in Azure SQL Database (strong consistency) and transaction audit logs in Azure Cosmos DB (eventual consistency by default). A compliance requirement demands that when a transaction is rolled back in the SQL database, the corresponding audit log entries in Cosmos DB must also be removed within a short time frame. Which term best describes the difficulty of maintaining this constraint?

Hard
219

A retail company stores customer data in a relational database table with columns for CustomerID, Name, and Email. Product reviews are stored as JSON documents where each document contains review text and a rating. Product images are stored as binary files in Azure Blob Storage. Which of the following correctly categorizes these data types in order: relational table, JSON documents, binary images?

Easy
220

Which TWO of the following are characteristics of structured data? (Choose two.)

Medium
221

Your company stores sensitive customer data in Azure SQL Database. You need to implement column-level encryption for the 'SSN' column using a customer-managed key stored in Azure Key Vault. Which feature should you use?

Hard
222

Refer to the exhibit. The JSON shows a configuration for which Azure service?

Easy
223

A data engineer needs to process streaming data from IoT devices in near real-time and store the results in Azure Cosmos DB. Which Azure service should they use for the stream processing?

Easy
224

A company receives data from a point-of-sale system. Each row contains TransactionID, ProductID, Quantity, and Price. The data has a fixed schema and is stored in a table. How should this data be classified?

Easy
225

A retail company stores customer data in three formats: a relational database table with fixed columns for CustomerID, Name, and Email; customer feedback as JSON documents with varying fields such as rating and comment; and product images as JPEG files. Which of the following correctly classifies these data types from most structured to least structured?

Easy
226

A company stores customer records in a relational table with columns like CustomerID, Name, and Email. Product reviews are stored as JSON documents, and marketing images are stored as PNG files. Which of the following correctly orders these data types from most structured to least structured?

Easy
227

A multinational corporation needs to store archival data for 10 years with the lowest possible storage cost, while still being able to retrieve it within 24 hours if needed. Which Azure storage tier should they use?

Hard
228

A logistics company uses an online system to process incoming delivery requests one at a time, updating the database immediately upon each transaction. They also run a weekly job that analyzes thousands of delivery records to identify average delivery times and trends. Which set of terms correctly classifies these two workloads?

Easy
229

Your company runs a global e-commerce platform that generates over 5 TB of clickstream data daily. The data is currently stored as raw CSV files in Azure Blob Storage. The data engineering team needs to transform this data into a star schema for business intelligence reporting. They want to use a serverless, code-first approach where they can write Python or SQL transformations. The transformed data should be stored in a format that optimizes query performance for Power BI. You also need to ensure that the solution can handle variable data volumes without manual scaling. Which Azure service should you use for the transformation?

Hard
230

A data engineer loads raw log files into a storage system. The structure of the data is interpreted at the time of reading, allowing queries to apply schema on the fly without preprocessing. This approach is best described as:

Hard
231

A company operates an online store where customers place orders and the system immediately updates inventory and records payments. This workload is best described as:

Easy
232

You are designing a data pipeline for a social media analytics platform. The pipeline needs to ingest posts from multiple sources (Twitter, Facebook) in real time, transform the data by adding sentiment scores, and store the results in a data store for later analysis. The transformation logic is simple and can be expressed as a SQL query. You want to minimize coding effort. Which Azure service should you use for the transformation step?

Easy
233

A manufacturing company collects sensor data from thousands of IoT devices. Each reading contains a device ID, timestamp, value, and device-specific measurement fields. The company needs to analyze the data in real time to detect anomalies and trigger alerts. They also need to store the same data for historical batch analysis to identify long-term trends. Which architecture pattern best describes this combination of data processing approaches?

Hard
234

A globally distributed online auction platform uses a replicated database system across multiple Azure regions. The system must continue accepting bids (writes) even if a network partition occurs between regions, because auctions cannot be interrupted. The business decides that during a partition, some users might see slightly outdated item prices (read inconsistency) but all bids must be recorded. According to the CAP theorem, which two properties is this system prioritizing?

Hard
235

A logistics company stores shipping waybill data as JSON documents. Each document contains fields like 'shipmentId', 'destination', and 'items', but the number of items and the fields within each item can vary between shipments. Which category best describes this type of data?

Easy

Frequently asked questions

What does the Describe core data concepts domain cover on the DP-900 exam?
Describe core data concepts questions test whether you can apply the concept in context, not just recognise a definition.
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This page lists all 235 Describe core data concepts questions in the DP-900 question bank. The actual exam draws from this domain proportionally to its weighting in the official exam blueprint.
What is the best way to practise this domain?
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Microsoft Azure Data Fundamentals DP-900 Describe core data concepts Practice Questions