CDS Cheat Sheet 2026

The 30 highest-yield CDS facts, distilled from real exam questions. Print it, save it as a PDF, or study it here — free, no sign-up.

1. What does 'data provenance' refer to in data management? → The documented history of data's origin, movement, and transformations
2. A newly appointed data steward is asked to perform a 'data asset inventory.' What is the primary output of this activity? → A catalog of datasets with metadata describing ownership, location, and business use
3. A data steward discovers that a dataset scheduled for deletion under the retention policy is subject to a legal hold. What is the correct action? → Suspend the retention schedule and preserve the data until the hold is lifted
4. When a company acquires another firm, the FIRST MDM priority should typically be: → Mapping and reconciling entity keys across both company's master data domains
5. The concept of 'data as an asset' implies which of the following governance obligations? → Data must be inventoried, valued, and managed throughout its lifecycle
6. What does a data steward typically do? → Oversee data standards and quality
7. What is the COST OF POOR DATA QUALITY (CPDQ) model primarily used for? → Quantifying the financial impact of data defects to justify DQ investments
8. When should an issue be escalated to a higher support level? → When the issue exceeds your technical expertise or authorization level
9. Which integration style is BEST described as systems communicating through events published to a shared channel that interested consumers subscribe to? → Publish-Subscribe (Pub/Sub)
10. A data steward is alerted that a nightly data load failed silently — no error was raised but records are missing. What type of control was absent? → Record count reconciliation control
11. What is the first step in a systematic troubleshooting approach? → Identify and clearly define the problem symptoms
12. Which of the following best supports the sustainability of a data governance program over time? → Embedding governance activities into existing business processes and workflows
13. When should architectural decisions be reviewed and potentially revised? → When requirements change significantly or performance targets are not met
14. A data steward notices that a data quality rule passes during development testing but fails in production. The MOST likely explanation is: → Test data does not reflect the full range or edge cases present in production data
15. What is the primary purpose of data masking in a security context? → Replacing sensitive data with realistic but fictitious values for non-production use
16. What makes a report effective for stakeholder communication? → Clear visualization of relevant metrics aligned with business objectives
17. What is a metadata repository? → A centralized store that captures, manages, and provides access to metadata across systems
18. Which metadata type describes the rules, constraints, and definitions that govern how data should be structured and used? → Business metadata
19. Which indicator signals that a reporting tool's metadata is out of sync with the actual data warehouse schema? → Column names in reports no longer match source table column names
20. SOX Section 404 places primary responsibility for assessing and reporting on internal controls over financial reporting on: → The company's management
21. What is 'data survivorship' in the context of record consolidation? → Rules that determine which attribute values survive when merging duplicate records
22. An organization notices that critical data elements have no assigned stewards and no documented business rules. This situation is best described as: → Data governance debt
23. HIPAA's Minimum Necessary Standard requires covered entities to: → Limit PHI access and disclosures to the least amount needed for the purpose
24. What is the primary benefit of automating repetitive tasks? → Reduced human error and increased consistency of results
25. When writing an automation script that processes sensitive PII, which practice is most critical for compliance? → Mask or tokenize PII before logging or displaying
26. In a federated data architecture, what is the primary responsibility of a data domain owner? → Owning, publishing, and maintaining data products for their domain
27. What is 'data standardization' in the context of data quality improvement? → Transforming data into consistent formats, codes, and representations across systems
28. Why is regular security training important for all staff? → Employees are often the weakest link in security and training reduces human error
29. Which data management concept allows users to query data across multiple source systems in real time without physically moving it to a central repository? → Data virtualization
30. A data steward needs to automate data masking for a test environment cloned from production. Which approach best balances realism and privacy? → Use format-preserving encryption or synthetic data generation