Microsoft Certified Data Analyst Associate Microsoft Azure Data Fundamentals 2 — Questions and Answers
Question 1: Which Azure service is best suited for storing and querying large volumes of semi-structured JSON documents?
- Azure SQL Database
- Azure Cosmos DB (Correct answer)
- Azure Table Storage
- Azure Data Lake Storage
Correct answer: Azure Cosmos DB
Azure Cosmos DB is a globally distributed NoSQL database that natively supports JSON documents with flexible schema and low-latency queries.
Question 2: In Azure Synapse Analytics, what is a 'dedicated SQL pool' primarily used for?
- Real-time stream processing
- Enterprise data warehousing with massively parallel processing (Correct answer)
- Serverless ad-hoc querying of data lake files
- Machine learning model training
Correct answer: Enterprise data warehousing with massively parallel processing
A dedicated SQL pool in Azure Synapse provides enterprise data warehousing capabilities using a massively parallel processing (MPP) architecture.
Question 3: What does the term 'data lakehouse' describe in modern analytics architectures?
- A data warehouse hosted in a lake district data center
- A combination of data lake flexibility with data warehouse structure and ACID transactions (Correct answer)
- A backup copy of a data warehouse stored in blob storage
- A streaming pipeline that feeds both a lake and a warehouse
Correct answer: A combination of data lake flexibility with data warehouse structure and ACID transactions
A data lakehouse combines the cost-effective storage of a data lake with the structured querying and ACID transaction support of a data warehouse.
Question 4: Which Azure service would you use to orchestrate and schedule data pipelines that move and transform data across multiple sources?
- Azure Stream Analytics
- Azure Data Factory (Correct answer)
- Azure Databricks
- Azure Event Hubs
Correct answer: Azure Data Factory
Azure Data Factory is a cloud-based ETL and data integration service used to create and schedule data-driven workflows (pipelines).
Question 5: In Azure, what is the purpose of a 'linked service' in Azure Data Factory?
- A network connection between two Azure regions
- A definition that contains the connection information needed to connect to external resources (Correct answer)
- A scheduled trigger that links pipelines together
- A shared dataset used across multiple pipelines
Correct answer: A definition that contains the connection information needed to connect to external resources
A linked service in Azure Data Factory defines the connection information (like connection strings or credentials) required to connect to an external data source or compute resource.
Question 6: Which feature of Azure Data Lake Storage Gen2 makes it optimized for big data analytics workloads?
- Built-in SQL query engine
- Hierarchical namespace enabling directory-level operations (Correct answer)
- Automatic data compression to ZIP format
- Native support for relational schemas
Correct answer: Hierarchical namespace enabling directory-level operations
The hierarchical namespace in ADLS Gen2 enables atomic directory operations, which dramatically improves performance for big data analytics frameworks like Hadoop and Spark.
Question 7: When using Azure Synapse Analytics serverless SQL pool, how are you billed?
- Per hour of pool uptime regardless of queries run
- Per terabyte of data processed by queries (Correct answer)
- Per number of rows returned by queries
- Flat monthly fee based on storage size
Correct answer: Per terabyte of data processed by queries
The serverless SQL pool in Azure Synapse charges based on the amount of data processed (scanned) by your queries, measured in terabytes.
Microsoft Certified Data Analyst Associate Microsoft Azure Data Fundamentals 2
Which Azure service is best suited for storing and querying large volumes of semi-structured JSON documents?