Databricks-Certified-Data-Engineer-Associate Databricks Certified Data Engineer Associate Exam Question and Answers

The MERGE command can be used to upsert data from a source table, view, or DataFrame into a target Delta table. It allows you to specify conditions for matching and updating existing records, and inserting new records when no match is found. This way, you can avoid writing duplicate records into a Delta table1. The other commands (DROP, IGNORE, APPEND, INSERT) do not have this functionality and may result in duplicate records or data loss234. References: 1: Upsert into a Delta Lake table using merge | Databricks on AWS 2: SQL DELETE | Databricks on AWS 3: SQL INSERT INTO | Databricks on AWS 4: SQL UPDATE | Databricks on AWS

The DELETE command in Delta Lake allows you to remove data that matches a predicate from a Delta table. This command will delete all the rows where the value in the column age is greater than 25 from the existing Delta table my_table and save the updated table. The other options are either incorrect or do not achieve the desired result. Option A will only select the rows that match the predicate, but not delete them. Option B will update the rows that match the predicate, but not delete them. Option D will update the rows that do not match the predicate, but not delete them. Option E will delete the rows that do not match the predicate, which is the opposite of what we want. References: Table deletes, updates, and merges — Delta Lake Documentation

The processingTime option specifies a time-based trigger interval for fixed interval micro-batches. This means that the query will execute a micro-batch to process data every 5 seconds, regardless of how much data is available. This option is suitable for near-real time processing workloads that require low latency and consistent processing frequency. The other options are either invalid syntax (A, C), default behavior (B), or experimental feature (E). References: Databricks Documentation - Configure Structured Streaming trigger intervals, Databricks Documentation - Trigger.

The expected behavior when a batch of data containing data that violates the expectation is processed is that the job will fail. This is because the expectation clause has the ON VIOLATION FAIL UPDATE option, which means that if any record in the batch does not meet the expectation, the entire batch will be rejected and the job will fail. This option is useful for enforcing strict data quality rules and preventing invalid data from entering the target dataset.

Option A is not correct, as the ON VIOLATION FAIL UPDATE option does not drop the records that violate the expectation, but fails the entire batch. To drop the records that violate the expectation and record them as invalid in the event log, the ON VIOLATION DROP RECORD option should be used.

Option C is not correct, as the ON VIOLATION FAIL UPDATE option does not drop the records that violate the expectation, but fails the entire batch. To drop the records that violate the expectation and load them into a quarantine table, the ON VIOLATION QUARANTINE RECORD option should be used.

Option D is not correct, as the ON VIOLATION FAIL UPDATE option does not add the records that violate the expectation, but fails the entire batch. To add the records that violate the expectation and record them as invalid in the event log, the ON VIOLATION LOG RECORD option should be used.

Option E is not correct, as the ON VIOLATION FAIL UPDATE option does not add the records that violate the expectation, but fails the entire batch. To add the records that violate the expectation and flag them as invalid in a field added to the target dataset, the ON VIOLATION FLAG RECORD option should be used.

Delta Live Tables Expectations

[Databricks Data Engineer Professional Exam Guide]

 Option E is the correct answer because it is the only mandatory requirement when creating a new Delta Live Tables pipeline. A pipeline is a data processing workflow that contains materialized views and streaming tables declared in Python or SQL source files. Delta Live Tables infers the dependencies between these tables and ensures updates occur in the correct order. To create a pipeline, you need to specify at least one notebook library to be executed, which contains the Delta Live Tables syntax. You can also specify multiple libraries of different languages within your pipeline. The other options are optional or not applicable for creating a pipeline. Option A is not required, but you can optionally provide a key-value pair configuration to customize the pipeline settings, such as the storage location, the target schema, the notifications, and the pipeline mode. Option B is not applicable, as the DBU/hour cost is determined by the cluster configuration, not the pipeline creation. Option C is not required, but you can optionally specify a storage location for the output data from the pipeline. If you leave it empty, the system uses a default location. Option D is not required, but you can optionally specify a location of a target database for the written data, either in the Hive metastore or the Unity Catalog.

 Tutorial: Run your first Delta Live Tables pipeline, What is Delta Live Tables?, Create a pipeline, Pipeline configuration.

When migrating to Delta Live Tables (DLT) with a data pipeline that involves different programming languages across various data layers, the migration does not require unifying the pipeline into a single language. Delta Live Tables support multi-language pipelines, allowing data engineers and data analysts to work in their preferred languages, such as Python for data engineering tasks (raw, bronze, and silver layers) and SQL for data analytics tasks (gold layer). This capability is particularly beneficial in collaborative settings and leverages the strengths of each language for different stages of data processing.

 In Databricks, you can use different languages within the same notebook by using magic commands. Magic commands are special commands that start with a percentage sign (%) and allow you to change the behavior of the cell. To use SQL within a cell of a Python notebook, you can add %sql to the first line of the cell. This will tell Databricks to interpret the rest of the cell as SQL code and execute it against the default database. You can also specify a different database by using the USE statement. The result of the SQL query will be displayed as a table or a chart, depending on the output mode. You can also assign the result to a Python variable by using the -o option. For example, %sql -o df SELECT * FROM my_table will run the SQL query and store the result as a pandas DataFrame in the Python variable df. Option A is incorrect, as it is possible to use SQL in a Python notebook using magic commands. Option B is incorrect, as attaching the cell to a SQL endpoint is not necessary and will not change the language of the cell. Option C is incorrect, as simply writing SQL syntax in the cell will result in a syntax error, as the cell will still be interpreted as Python code. Option E is incorrect, as changing the default language of the notebook to SQL will affect all the cells, not just one. References: Use SQL in Notebooks - Knowledge Base - Noteable, [SQL magic commands - Databricks], [Databricks SQL Guide - Databricks]

A data engineer can create a multi-task job in Databricks that consists of multiple tasks that run in a specific order. Each task can have one or more dependencies, which are other tasks that must run before the current task. The Depends On field of a new Databricks Job Task allows the data engineer to specify the dependencies of the task. The data engineer should select a task in the Depends On field when they want the new task to run only after the selected task has successfully completed. This can help the data engineer to create a logical sequence of tasks that depend on each other’s outputs or results. For example, a data engineer can create a multi-task job that consists of the following tasks:

Task A: Ingest data from a source using Auto Loader

Task B: Transform the data using Spark SQL

Task C: Write the data to a Delta Lake table

Task D: Analyze the data using Spark ML

Task E: Visualize the data using Databricks SQL

In this case, the data engineer can set the dependencies of each task as follows:

Task A: No dependencies

Task B: Depends on Task A

Task C: Depends on Task B

Task D: Depends on Task C

Task E: Depends on Task D

This way, the data engineer can ensure that each task runs only after the previous task has successfully completed, and the data flows smoothly from ingestion to visualization.

The other options are incorrect because they do not describe valid scenarios for selecting a task in the Depends On field. The Depends On field does not affect the following aspects of a task:

Whether the task needs to be replaced by another task

Whether the task needs to fail before another task begins

Whether the task has the same dependency libraries as another task

Whether the task needs to use as little compute resources as possible References: Create a multi-task job, Run tasks conditionally in a Databricks job, Databricks Jobs.

In a Databricks customer's cloud account, the primary elements stored include:

Data: This is the central type of content stored in the customer's cloud account. Data might include various datasets, tables, and files that are used and managed through Databricks platforms.

Notebooks: These are also stored within a customer's cloud account. Notebooks include scripts, notes, and other information necessary for data analysis and processing tasks.

Cluster management metadata is indeed managed through the cloud, but it's primarily handled by Databricks rather than stored directly in the customer's account. The Databricks web application itself is not stored within the customer's cloud account; rather, it's a service provided by Databricks.

The STREAM function is used to process data from a streaming live table or view, which is a table or view that contains data that has been added only since the last pipeline update. Streaming live tables and views are stateful, meaning that they retain the state of the previous pipeline run and only process new data based on the current query. This is useful for incremental processing of streaming or batch data sources. The customers table in the query is a streaming live table, which means that it contains the latest data from the source. The STREAM function enables the query to read the data from the customers table incrementally and create another streaming live table named loyal_customers, which contains the customer IDs of the customers with high loyalty level. References: Difference between LIVE TABLE and STREAMING LIVE TABLE, CREATE STREAMING TABLE, Load data using streaming tables in Databricks SQL.

The COPY INTO statement is an idempotent operation, which means that it will skip any files that have already been loaded into the target table1. This ensures that the data is not duplicated or corrupted by multiple attempts to load the same file. Therefore, if the data engineer runs the same command every day without specifying the names of the files to be copied with the FILES keyword or a glob pattern with the PATTERN keyword, the statement will only copy the first file that matches the source location and ignore the rest. To avoid this problem, the data engineer should either use the FILES or PATTERN keywords to filter the files to be copied based on the date or some other criteria, or delete the files from the source location after they are copied into the table2. References: 1: COPY INTO | Databricks on AWS 2: Get started using COPY INTO to load data | Databricks on AWS

Serverless compute for workflows is designed to minimize operational overhead for Databricks Jobs while enforcing Unity Catalog governance. When a job is configured to run on serverless compute (in supported regions), Databricks automatically selects instance types, manages autoscaling, enables Photon where applicable, and handles runtime upgrades without user intervention. This directly satisfies the requirement to reduce operational toil. All-purpose clusters (option B) and traditional job clusters (option C) still require users to manage cluster sizing, instance families, and runtime versions, which contradicts the goal of automation. SQL warehouses (option A) are intended for SQL workloads and do not support running general Python notebook job tasks as workflow steps. Databricks documentation specifies that serverless workflows are compatible with Unity Catalog and are the recommended approach when users want fully managed compute for scheduled pipelines and tasks, provided the workspace is in a supported region. This makes serverless compute the correct and fully compliant solution.

To sync a Databricks Repo with the changes from a central Git repository, the data engineer needs to run the Git pull operation. This operation fetches the latest updates from the remote repository and merges them with the local repository. The data engineer can use the Pull button in the Databricks Repos UI, or use the git pull command in a terminal session. The other options are not relevant for this task, as they either push changes to the remote repository (Push), combine two branches (Merge), save changes to the local repository (Commit), or create a new local repository from a remote one (Clone). References:

Run Git operations on Databricks Repos

Git pull

The scenario in which a data engineer will want to use a single-node cluster is when they are working interactively with a small amount of data. A single-node cluster is a cluster consisting of an Apache Spark driver and no Spark workers1. A single-node cluster supports Spark jobs and all Spark data sources, including Delta Lake1. A single-node cluster is helpful for single-node machine learning workloads that use Spark to load and save data, and for lightweight exploratory data analysis1. A single-node cluster can run Spark locally, spawn one executor thread per logical core in the cluster, and save all log output in the driver log1. A single-node cluster can be created by selecting the Single Node button when configuring a cluster1.

The other options are not suitable for using a single-node cluster. When running automated reports to be refreshed as quickly as possible, a data engineer will want to use a multi-node cluster that can scale up and down automatically based on the workload demand2. When working with SQL within Databricks SQL, a data engineer will want to use a SQL Endpoint that can execute SQL queries on a serverless pool or an existing cluster3. When concerned about the ability to automatically scale with larger data, a data engineer will want to use a multi-node cluster that can leverage the Databricks Lakehouse Platform and the Delta Engine to handle large-scale data processing efficiently and reliably4. When manually running reports with a large amount of data, a data engineer will want to use a multi-node cluster that can distribute the computation across multiple workers and leverage the Spark UI to monitor the performance and troubleshoot the issues.

1: Single Node clusters | Databricks on AWS

2: Autoscaling | Databricks on AWS

3: SQL Endpoints | Databricks on AWS

4: Databricks Lakehouse Platform | Databricks on AWS

[Spark UI | Databricks on AWS]

In Unity Catalog, the Metastore Admin role has the highest level of authority within a metastore and is responsible for governing all data assets registered in that metastore. Metastore admins can transfer ownership of catalogs, manage privileges across all securable objects (catalogs, schemas, tables, views), and administer storage credentials, external locations, and Delta Sharing objects such as shares and recipients. This makes the role essential when a platform owner departs and continuity must be maintained at an organizational level. Workspace admins (option B) manage workspace-level settings but do not automatically have authority over Unity Catalog ownership unless explicitly granted. Catalog owners (option D) are limited to a single catalog and cannot perform actions across the entire metastore. Account admins (option A) operate at the account level and are primarily responsible for creating metastores and assigning admins, not for day-to-day governance within an existing metastore. Databricks documentation clearly defines the Metastore Admin as the role required to centrally manage ownership, privileges, and data sharing across the metastore in Databricks.

The data engineering team can use the spark.table method to access the Delta table sales in PySpark. This method returns a DataFrame representation of the Delta table, which can be used for further processing or testing. The spark.table method works for any table that is registered in the Hive metastore or the Spark catalog, regardless of the file format1. Alternatively, the data engineering team can also use the DeltaTable.forPath method to load the Delta table from its path2. References: 1: SparkSession | PySpark 3.2.0 documentation 2: Welcome to Delta Lake’s Python documentation page — delta-spark 2.4.0 documentation

The best practice is to use "Complete" as output mode instead of "append" when working with aggregated tables. Since gold layer is work final aggregated tables, the only option with output mode as complete is option E.

To read from a stream source, the data engineer needs to use the spark.readStream method instead of the spark.read method. The spark.readStream method returns a DataStreamReader object that can be used to specify the details of the input source, such as the format, the schema, the path, and the options. The spark.read method is only suitable for batch processing, not streaming processing. The other changes are not necessary or correct for reading from a stream source. References: Structured Streaming Programming Guide, Read a stream, Databricks Data Sources

This approach would allow the data engineering team to use the existing SQL program and add some logic to control the execution of the final query based on the day of the week. They could use the datetime module in Python to get the current date and check if it is a Sunday. If so, they could run the final query, otherwise they could skip it. This way, they could schedule the program to run every day without changing the data model or the source table. References: PySpark SQL Module, Python datetime Module, Databricks Jobs

A table is a data entity that is stored in a physical location and can be accessed by other data engineers in other sessions. A table can be created from one or more tables using the CREATE TABLE or CREATE TABLE AS SELECT commands. A table can also be registered from an existing DataFrame using the spark.catalog.createTable method. A table can be queried using SQL or DataFrame APIs. A table can also be updated, deleted, or appended using the MERGE INTO command or the DeltaTable API. References:

Create a table

Create a table from a query result

Register a table from a DataFrame

[Query a table]

[Update, delete, or merge into a table]

 Delta Live Tables expectations are optional clauses that apply data quality checks on each record passing through a query. An expectation consists of a description, a boolean statement, and an action to take when a record fails the expectation. The ON VIOLATION clause specifies the action to take, which can be one of the following: warn, drop, or fail. The drop action means that invalid records are dropped from the target dataset before data is written to the target. The failure is reported as a metric for the dataset, which can be viewed by querying the Delta Live Tables event log. The event log contains information such as the number of records that violate an expectation, the number of records dropped, and the number of records written to the target dataset. References:

Manage data quality with Delta Live Tables

Monitor Delta Live Tables pipelines

Delta Live Tables SQL language reference

Option D is the correct answer because it enables the Serverless feature for the SQL endpoint, which allows the endpoint to automatically scale up and down based on the query load. This way, the endpoint can handle more concurrent queries and reduce the time it takes to return results. The Serverless feature also reduces the cold start time of the endpoint, which is the time it takes to start the cluster when a query is submitted to a non-running endpoint. The Serverless feature is available for both AWS and Azure Databricks platforms.

 Databricks SQL Serverless, Serverless SQL endpoints, New Performance Improvements in Databricks SQL

Bronze tables are the first layer of a medallion architecture, which is a data design pattern used to organize data in a lakehouse. Bronze tables contain raw data ingested from various sources, such as RDBMS data, JSON files, IoT data, etc. The table structures in this layer correspond to the source system table structures “as-is”, along with any additional metadata columns that capture the load date/time, process ID, etc. The only transformation applied to the raw data in this layer is to apply a schema, which defines the column names and data types of the table. The schema can be inferred from the data source or specified explicitly. Applying a schema to the raw data enables the use of SQL and other structured query languages to access and analyze the data. Therefore, option E is the correct answer. References: What is a Medallion Architecture?, Raw Data Ingestion into Delta Lake Bronze tables using Azure Synapse Mapping Data Flow, Apache Spark + Delta Lake concepts, Delta Lake Architecture & Azure Databricks Workspace.

Databricks Asset Bundles are a Databricks CLI feature that lets teams define Databricks projects “as code” using YAML configuration files. In a bundle, metadata is expressed in YAML (for example, a required databricks.yml at the root), and the configuration can declare resources (such as Databricks Jobs/workflows and other supported assets), artifacts, and deployment targets. After defining these YAML manifests, teams use the Databricks CLI to validate, deploy, and run the bundle into a Databricks workspace, which matches the scenario described (YAML + CLI deployment). This approach standardizes how workflows and related resources are packaged and promoted across environments (dev/test/prod) while keeping definitions version-controlled and reproducible. GitHub is only a hosting/version-control platform (not the YAML deployment feature itself), Terraform is a separate IaC tool, and “DataOps” is a methodology rather than a specific Databricks feature. (Databricks Documentation)

Delta Lake is the optimized storage layer that provides the foundation for storing data and tables in the Databricks lakehouse. Delta Lake is open source software that extends Parquet data files with a file-based transaction log for ACID transactions and scalable metadata handling1. Delta Lake stores its data and metadata in a collection of files in a directory on a cloud storage system, such as AWS S3 or Azure Data Lake Storage2. Each Delta table has a transaction log that records the history of operations performed on the table, such as insert, update, delete, merge, etc. The transaction log also stores the schema and partitioning information of the table2. The transaction log enables Delta Lake to provide ACID guarantees, time travel, schema enforcement, and other features1. References:

What is Delta Lake? | Databricks on AWS

Quickstart — Delta Lake Documentation

he approach that can be used to identify the owner of new_table is to review the Owner field in the table’s page in Data Explorer. Data Explorer is a web-based interface that allows users to browse, create, and manage data objects such as tables, views, and functions in Databricks1. The table’s page in Data Explorer provides various information about the table, such as its schema, partitions, statistics, history, and permissions2. The Owner field shows the name and email address of the user who created or owns the table3. The data engineer can use this information to contact the table owner and request for permission to access the table.

The other options are not correct or reliable for identifying the owner of new_table. Reviewing the Permissions tab in the table’s page in Data Explorer can show the users and groups who have access to the table, but not necessarily the owner4. Reviewing the Owner field in the table’s page in the cloud storage solution can be misleading, as the owner of the data files may not be the same as the owner of the table5. There is a way to identify the owner of the table, as explained above, so option E is false.

1: Data Explorer | Databricks on AWS

2: Table details | Databricks on AWS

3: Set owner when creating a view in databricks sql - Databricks - 9978

4: Table access control | Databricks on AWS

5: External tables | Databricks on AWS

https://community.databricks.com/t5/data-engineering/sequential-vs-concurrency-optimization-questions-from-query/td-p/36696

The SQL keyword that can be used to convert a table from a long format to a wide format is PIVOT. The PIVOT clause is used to rotate the rows of a table into columns of a new table1. The PIVOT clause can aggregate the values of a column based on the distinct values of another column, and use those values as the column names of the new table1. The PIVOT clause can be useful for transforming data from a long format, where each row represents an observation with multiple attributes, to a wide format, where each row represents an observation with a single attribute and multiple values2. For example, the PIVOT clause can be used to convert a table that contains the sales of different products by different regions into a table that contains the sales of each product by each region as separate columns1.

The other options are not suitable for converting a table from a long format to a wide format. CONVERT is a function that can be used to change the data type of an expression3. WHERE is a clause that can be used to filter the rows of a table based on a condition4. TRANSFORM is a keyword that can be used to apply a user-defined function to a group of rows in a table5. SUM is a function that can be used to calculate the total of a numeric column.

1: PIVOT | Databricks on AWS

2: Reshaping Data - Long vs Wide Format | Databricks on AWS

3: CONVERT | Databricks on AWS

4: WHERE | Databricks on AWS

5: TRANSFORM | Databricks on AWS

[SUM | Databricks on AWS]

In the given command, a data engineer is trying to create a table in Databricks using data from an SQLite database. The correct option to fill in the blank is “sqlite” because it specifies the type of database being connected to in a JDBC connection string. The USING clause should be followed by the format of the data, and since we are connecting to an SQLite database, “sqlite” would be appropriate here. References:

Create a table using JDBC

JDBC connection string

SQLite JDBC driver

Auto Loader is a tool that can incrementally and efficiently process new data files as they arrive in cloud storage without any additional setup. Auto Loader provides a Structured Streaming source called cloudFiles, which automatically detects and processes new files in a given input directory path on the cloud file storage. Auto Loader also tracks the ingestion progress and ensures exactly-once semantics when writing data into Delta Lake. Auto Loader can ingest various file formats, such as JSON, CSV, XML, PARQUET, AVRO, ORC, TEXT, and BINARYFILE. Auto Loader has support for both Python and SQL in Delta Live Tables, which are a declarative way to build production-quality data pipelines with Databricks. References: What is Auto Loader?, Get started with Databricks Auto Loader, Auto Loader in Delta Live Tables