Databricks Certified Data Engineer Associate Auto Loader and Data Ingestion 2

Question 1

Which Auto Loader option limits processing to a maximum number of files per trigger interval?

Accepted Answer

cloudFiles.maxFilesPerTrigger

Answer

`cloudFiles.maxFilesPerTrigger` caps the number of files Auto Loader will process in a single micro-batch, useful for controlling throughput and cluster load.

Question 2

Auto Loader's file notification mode on AWS relies on which combination of managed services?

Accepted Answer

S3 + SNS + SQS

Answer

On AWS, Auto Loader's file notification mode uses S3 event notifications published to an SNS topic, which fans out to an SQS queue that Auto Loader polls for new file events.

Question 3

When `cloudFiles.inferColumnTypes` is set to false in Auto Loader schema inference, how are columns typed?

Accepted Answer

All inferred columns default to StringType

Answer

With `cloudFiles.inferColumnTypes=false`, Auto Loader infers the schema but types every column as StringType, which is the safest fallback for heterogeneous data.

Question 4

Which statement BEST compares COPY INTO versus Auto Loader for data ingestion?

Accepted Answer

Auto Loader is better suited for large-scale continuous streaming; COPY INTO is designed for idempotent batch loads

Answer

Auto Loader excels at large-scale, continuously arriving data with Structured Streaming, while COPY INTO is an idempotent SQL command suited for scheduled batch ingestion into Delta tables.

Question 5

Which of the following file formats is NOT natively supported as input by Auto Loader?

Accepted Answer

Microsoft Excel (.xlsx)

Answer

Auto Loader natively supports JSON, CSV, Parquet, Avro, ORC, text, and binary files, but does not support proprietary formats like Microsoft Excel (.xlsx).

Databricks Data Engineer Practice Test

Databricks Data Engineer Practice Test

Databricks Certified Data Engineer Associate Auto Loader and Data Ingestion 2