DP-900 Describe core data concepts Practice Question
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?
⚠ Common exam trap
It's easy for candidates to confuse orchestration services with compute or processing services, assuming Azure Databricks or Azure Functions can handle scheduling and data movement, when in fact Azure Data Factory is the dedicated PaaS orchestrator for such pipelines.
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 Data Factory
Azure Data Factory (ADF) is the correct choice because it is a cloud-based ETL and data orchestration service designed specifically for building complex, schedule-driven pipelines. It natively supports incremental data loading from on-premises SQL Server via self-hosted integration runtime, and can trigger pipelines on an hourly schedule with minimal latency, making it ideal for this scenario.
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 Logic Apps
Why it's wrong here
Azure Logic Apps is a low-code integration service for connecting applications through hundreds of prebuilt connectors, but it is designed for lightweight workflows like approvals or file notifications, not for high-throughput ETL pipelines. It lacks native capabilities for large-scale data transformation, scheduled incremental copying, and monitoring of data movement, making it unsuitable for continuously ingesting sales transactions from on-premises sources.
- ✗
Azure Databricks
Why it's wrong here
Azure Databricks is a high-performance analytics platform built on Apache Spark, primarily used for processing and transforming large volumes of data for machine learning or advanced analytics. It is not a dedicated data orchestration or ETL service and would require you to hand-code connectors, scheduling, and incremental load logic, which duplicates functionality that an orchestration tool like Data Factory provides. For a sales transaction ingestion pipeline, Databricks is often leveraged downstream for complex transformations, not as the ingestion and load engine itself.
- ✗
Azure Functions
Why it's wrong here
Azure Functions is a serverless compute service that runs event-triggered code snippets, making it ideal for microservices or lightweight API responses, but not for orchestrating complex data movements. It has no built-in data integration connectors, no mechanism for scheduling multi-step ETL pipelines with dependencies and retries, and no visual pipeline monitoring, so using it for incremental data ingestion would require considerable custom development and maintenance.
- ✓
Azure Data Factory
Why this is correct
Azure Data Factory is a fully managed, code-free ETL/ELT and orchestration service built specifically for ingesting data from many sources, including on-premises databases, and moving it to cloud destinations. It provides scheduled triggers, pipeline dependencies, and a self-hosted integration runtime for secure hybrid connectivity, enabling reliable incremental loads of sales transactions by using watermark columns or change tracking mechanisms. This makes it the correct choice for designing a production-grade data pipeline.
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Related to this question
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Data Roles and Core Concepts
Key term
Azure Data Factory
Azure Data Factory is a cloud-based data integration service that lets you create, schedule, and orchestrate data pipelines to move and transform data from various sources to destinations.
Key term
Azure Synapse Analytics
Azure Synapse Analytics is a cloud-based data integration, warehousing, and analytics service that brings together big data and data warehouse capabilities under one platform.
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Written by Johnson Ajibi, MSc IT Security
Senior Network & Security Engineer · founder of Courseiva
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