DP-900 Describe core data concepts Practice Question
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?
⚠ Common exam trap
Watch out — candidates often confuse security (access control) with concurrency (multi-user access) or consistency (data integrity), because RLS involves filtering rows during queries, which might superficially resemble managing concurrent access or ensuring data correctness.
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
✓
Security
Row-level security (RLS) in Azure SQL Database restricts data access at the database engine level by applying a security predicate that filters rows based on user attributes, such as region. This directly addresses the security characteristic of a data workload by ensuring that users can only see data they are authorized to view, without requiring application-level changes.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✗
Concurrency
Why it's wrong here
Row-level security (RLS) filters returned rows based on a security predicate, but it does nothing to coordinate or serialize concurrent transactions. Azure SQL Database handles concurrency through locking, row versioning, and isolation levels. Therefore, selecting Concurrency would misidentify an authorization mechanism as a concurrency-control feature.
- ✗
Consistency
Why it's wrong here
RLS is not a data-integrity feature; it does not validate relationships, constraints, or business rules. Consistency in ACID guarantees that a transaction moves the database from one valid state to another, enforced by primary/foreign keys and check constraints. RLS simply restricts which rows a principal can see, so it fails to match the definition of consistency.
- ✓
Security
Why this is correct
Row-level security is a native security capability that limits row access through an inline table-valued predicate function and a security policy. It can use SESSION_CONTEXT or user identity to return only authorized rows, protecting sensitive data without requiring application-layer WHERE clauses. Thus Security is the correct category for this feature.
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Durability
Why it's wrong here
Durability concerns the ability of committed transactions to persist after a crash or power loss, which is handled by transaction logs and backups in Azure SQL Database. RLS has no role in writing or recovering committed data; it is a read-/write-time filter. Selecting Durability confuses persistence guarantees with access control.
Go deeper
Related to this question
Learn chapter
Data Roles and Core Concepts
Key term
Row
A row is a horizontal record in a database table that contains all the information about a single entity, like one customer or one product.
Key term
Data
Data is raw, unprocessed information, like numbers, words, or measurements, that can be stored, processed, and analyzed by computers.
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JA
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.