This DP-900 practice question tests your understanding of describe an analytics workload on azure. Match the stated requirement to the specific cloud service, access model, or configuration option — many options are valid in isolation but not for this scenario. After answering, compare your reasoning against the explanation and wrong-answer breakdown below. Once you have made your selection, read the full explanation to reinforce the concept and understand why each distractor is designed to mislead on exam day.
Your company is migrating an on-premises SQL Server data warehouse to Azure. The solution must support both historical analytics and real-time reporting. Which Azure service should you recommend as the primary data store?
Clue words in this question
Noticing these words before you look at the options changes how you read each choice.
Clue: "primary"
Why it matters: Asks for the main purpose or function, not a secondary benefit. Eliminate answers that describe side-effects or partial functions.
Azure Analysis Services
Why wrong: Semantic model, not a data store.
Azure Data Lake Storage Gen2
Why wrong: Storage only, needs a compute layer like Synapse or Databricks.
Azure SQL Database
Why wrong: Primarily for OLTP, not large-scale analytics.
Azure Synapse Analytics
Purpose-built cloud data warehouse with support for real-time analytics.
Answer choices
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
Azure Synapse Analytics is the correct choice because it is a cloud-native analytics service that unifies big data and data warehousing, supporting both historical analytics (via dedicated SQL pools for large-scale relational data warehousing) and real-time reporting (via serverless SQL pools or Apache Spark pools for streaming and interactive queries). It is designed to handle the migration of an on-premises SQL Server data warehouse while providing integrated capabilities for batch and real-time workloads.
Key principle: Answer the scenario, not the keyword: identify the specific constraint before choosing the most familiar-sounding option.
Answer analysis
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
Semantic model, not a data store.
Azure Data Lake Storage Gen2
Why it's wrong here
Storage only, needs a compute layer like Synapse or Databricks.
Azure SQL Database
Why it's wrong here
Primarily for OLTP, not large-scale analytics.
Azure Synapse Analytics
Why this is correct
Purpose-built cloud data warehouse with support for real-time analytics.
Clue confirmation
The clue word "primary" in the question point toward this answer.
Related concept
Read the scenario before looking for a memorised answer.
Common exam traps
The trap here is that candidates often confuse Azure SQL Database (an OLTP service) with a data warehouse solution, overlooking that Synapse Analytics is the dedicated Azure service for hybrid transactional/analytical processing (HTAP) and large-scale analytics workloads.
Detailed technical explanation
Azure Synapse Analytics uses a distributed query processing architecture with Massively Parallel Processing (MPP) across compute nodes, enabling fast query execution on petabyte-scale datasets. It supports T-SQL for dedicated SQL pools and offers serverless SQL pools that query data directly from Data Lake Storage using a pay-per-query model, making it suitable for both scheduled historical reports and ad-hoc real-time analysis. In a real-world scenario, a retail company could use Synapse to run nightly ETL jobs for historical sales trends while simultaneously querying live streaming data from IoT sensors for inventory alerts.
Key takeaway
Answer the scenario, not the keyword: identify the specific constraint before choosing the most familiar-sounding option.
Real-world example
A media company stores terabytes of video archives that are accessed once a year for audit purposes. Moving these objects to a cold storage tier (Azure Archive, S3 Glacier, or Google Nearline) costs a fraction of hot storage. Questions like this test whether you understand storage tiers, access frequency tradeoffs, and retrieval latency requirements.
What to study next
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FAQ
Describe an analytics workload on Azure — This question tests Describe an analytics workload on Azure — Read the scenario before looking for a memorised answer..
The correct answer is: Azure Synapse Analytics — Azure Synapse Analytics is the correct choice because it is a cloud-native analytics service that unifies big data and data warehousing, supporting both historical analytics (via dedicated SQL pools for large-scale relational data warehousing) and real-time reporting (via serverless SQL pools or Apache Spark pools for streaming and interactive queries). It is designed to handle the migration of an on-premises SQL Server data warehouse while providing integrated capabilities for batch and real-time workloads.
Identify which exam domain this question belongs to, review the core concept, then practise similar questions from the same domain.
Yes — watch for: "primary". Asks for the main purpose or function, not a secondary benefit. Eliminate answers that describe side-effects or partial functions.
Read the scenario before looking for a memorised answer.
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Last reviewed: Jun 24, 2026
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