PL-900 Practice Question: Describe the business value of Microsoft Power Platform
A hospital uses Power BI to monitor patient wait times. The data source is an on-premises SQL Server database. To ensure real-time reporting, what should the hospital deploy?
⚠ Common exam trap
Test-takers frequently confuse the on-premises data gateway with Power BI Report Server, mistakenly thinking an on-premises server is needed for on-premises data, when in fact the gateway enables cloud-based Power BI to securely access on-premises data sources in real time.
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
✓
On-premises data gateway
The on-premises data gateway (Option C) is the correct choice because it acts as a bridge between Power BI in the cloud and the on-premises SQL Server database, enabling real-time or near-real-time data refreshes for dashboards. Without this gateway, Power BI cannot directly connect to on-premises data sources, making it impossible to achieve real-time reporting from the hospital's local database.
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 an extract-transform-load orchestration service, not a real-time streaming or direct query engine; it cannot push sub-second latency updates from an on-premises SQL Server into Power BI dashboards. It is tempting because it is the standard tool for scheduled data movement and transformation in Azure, and would be correct if the requirement were nightly batch refreshes rather than real-time reporting.
- ✗
Power BI Report Server
Why it's wrong here
Used for hosting reports on-premises, but does not provide live connectivity to on-premises data.
- ✓
On-premises data gateway
Why this is correct
Enables secure data transfer between on-premises data sources and Power BI for live dashboards.
- ✗
Power BI Desktop
Why it's wrong here
A report authoring tool, not a connectivity solution.
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Written by Johnson Ajibi, MSc IT Security
Senior Network & Security Engineer · founder of Courseiva
This PL-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 PL-900 exam.