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

https://www.databricks.com/blog/2021/10/20/introducing-sql-user-defined-functions.html

In Databricks, when creating a table, you can add a comment to columns or the entire table to provide more information about the data it contains. In this case, since it’s organization policy to indicate that the new table includes personally identifiable information (PII), option D is correct. The line of code would be added after defining the table structure and before closing with a semicolon. References: Data Engineer Associate Exam Guide, CREATE TABLE USING (Databricks SQL)

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

To find the owner of a table in Databricks, one can utilize the Data Explorer feature. The Data Explorer provides detailed information about various data objects, including tables. By navigating to the specific table's page in Data Explorer, a data engineer can review the Owner field, which identifies the individual or role that owns the table. This information is crucial for obtaining the necessary permissions or for any administrative actions related to the table.

According to the medallion lakehouse architecture, gold tables are the final layer of data that powers analytics, machine learning, and production applications. They are often highly refined and aggregated, containing data that has been transformed into knowledge, rather than just information. Silver tables, on the other hand, are the intermediate layer of data that represents a validated, enriched version of the raw data from the bronze layer. They provide an enterprise view of all its key business entities, concepts and transactions, but they may not have all the aggregations and calculations that are required for specific use cases. Therefore, gold tables are more likely to contain aggregations than silver tables. References:

What is the medallion lakehouse architecture?

What is a Medallion Architecture?

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

The command DESCRIBE DATABASE customer360; will return the location of the database customer360, along with its comment and properties. This command is an alias for DESCRIBE SCHEMA customer360;, which can also be used to get the same information. The other commands will either drop the database, alter its properties, or use it as the current database, but will not return its location12. References:

DESCRIBE DATABASE | Databricks on AWS

DESCRIBE DATABASE - Azure Databricks - Databricks SQL

A temporary view is a relational object that is defined in the metastore and points to an existing DataFrame. It does not copy or store any physical data, but only saves the query that defines the view. The lifetime of a temporary view is tied to the SparkSession that was used to create it, so it does not persist across different sessions or applications. A temporary view is useful for accessing the same data multiple times within the same notebook or session, without incurring additional storage costs. The other options are either materialized (A, E), persistent (B, C), or not relational objects ©. References: Databricks Documentation - Temporary View, Databricks Community - How do temp views actually work?, Databricks Community - What’s the difference between a Global view and a Temp view?, Big Data Programmers - Temporary View in Databricks.

A data lakehouse is a data management architecture that combines the flexibility, cost-efficiency, and scale of data lakes with the data management and ACID transactions of data warehouses, enabling business intelligence (BI) and machine learning (ML) on all data12. One of the key features of a data lakehouse is that it supports ACID-compliant transactions, which means that it ensures data integrity, consistency, and isolation across concurrent read and write operations3. This feature results in improved data quality over a traditional data lake, which does not support transactions and may suffer from data corruption, duplication, or inconsistency due to concurrent or streaming data ingestion and processing . References: 1: What is a Data Lakehouse? - Databricks 2: What is a Data Lakehouse? Definition, features & benefits. - Qlik 3: ACID Transactions - Databricks : [Data Lake vs Data Warehouse: Key Differences] : [Data Lakehouse: The Future of Data Engineering]

 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

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.

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.

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

 A streaming live table or view processes data that has been added only since the last pipeline update. Streaming tables and views are stateful; if the defining query changes, new data will be processed based on the new query and existing data is not recomputed. This is useful when data needs to be processed incrementally, such as when ingesting streaming data sources or performing incremental loads from batch data sources. A live table or view, on the other hand, may be entirely computed when possible to optimize computation resources and time. This is suitable when data needs to be processed in full, such as when performing complex transformations or aggregations that require scanning all the data. References: Difference between LIVE TABLE and STREAMING LIVE TABLE, CREATE STREAMING TABLE, Load data using streaming tables in Databricks SQL.

dbfs:/user/hive/warehouse Thereby showing "dbfs:/user/hive/warehouse/customer360.db

 The location of the customer360 database depends on the value of the spark.sql.warehouse.dir configuration property, which specifies the default location for managed databases and tables. If the property is not set, the default value is dbfs:/user/hive/warehouse. Therefore, the customer360 database will be located in dbfs:/user/hive/warehouse/customer360.db. However, if the property is set to a different value, such as dbfs:/user/hive/database, then the customer360 database will be located in dbfs:/user/hive/database/customer360.db. Thus, more information is needed to determine the correct response.

Option A is not correct, as dbfs:/user/hive/database/customer360 is not the default location for managed databases and tables, unless the spark.sql.warehouse.dir property is explicitly set to dbfs:/user/hive/database.

Option B is not correct, as dbfs:/user/hive/warehouse is the default location for the root directory of managed databases and tables, not for a specific database. The database name should be appended with .db to the directory path, such as dbfs:/user/hive/warehouse/customer360.db.

Option C is not correct, as dbfs:/user/hive/customer360 is not a valid location for a managed database, as it does not follow the directory structure specified by the spark.sql.warehouse.dir property.

The correct command to create a new table that contains all records from two tables without duplicate records is to use the UNION operator. The UNION operator combines the results of two queries and removes any duplicate rows. The INNER JOIN, OUTER JOIN, and MERGE operators do not remove duplicate rows, and the INTERSECT operator only returns the rows that are common to both tables. Therefore, option B is the only correct answer. References: Databricks SQL Reference - UNION, Databricks SQL Reference - JOIN, Databricks SQL Reference - MERGE, [Databricks SQL Reference - INTERSECT]

 The spark.sql method can be used to execute SQL queries programmatically and return the result as a DataFrame. The spark.sql method accepts a string argument that contains a valid SQL statement. The data engineer can use a formatted string literal (f-string) to insert the Python variable table_name into the SQL query. The other methods are either invalid or not suitable for running SQL queries. References: Running SQL Queries Programmatically, Formatted string literals, spark.sql

 To grant full permissions on a database to a user, group, or service principal, the GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON DATABASE command can be used. This command grants all the applicable privileges on the database, such as CREATE, SELECT, MODIFY, and USAGE. The other options are either incorrect or incomplete, as they do not grant all the privileges or specify the wrong database or principal. References:

GRANT

Privileges

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

 To grant full permissions on a table to a user or a group, you can use the GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON TABLE statement. This statement will grant all the possible privileges on the table, such as SELECT, CREATE, MODIFY, DROP, ALTER, etc. Option A is the only code block that follows this syntax correctly. Option B is incorrect, as it does not grant all the possible privileges on the table, but only a subset of them. Option C is incorrect, as it only grants the SELECT privilege on the table, which is not enough to fully manage the project. Option D is incorrect, as it grants the USAGE privilege on the table, which is not a valid privilege for tables. Option E is incorrect, as it grants all the privileges on the table team to the user or group sales, which is the opposite of what the question asks. References: Grant privileges on a table using SQL | Databricks on AWS, Grant privileges on a table using SQL - Azure Databricks, SQL Privileges - Databricks

 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.

To grant full privileges on a table such as 'sales' to a group like 'team', the correct SQL command in Databricks is:

GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON TABLE sales TO team;

This command assigns all available privileges, including SELECT, INSERT, UPDATE, DELETE, and any other data manipulation or definition actions, to the specified team. This is typically necessary when a team needs full control over a table to manage and manipulate it as part of a project or ongoing maintenance.

Option A is the correct answer because it shows the result of an INNER JOIN between the two tables. An INNER JOIN returns only the rows that have matching values in both tables based on the join condition. In this case, the join condition is ON a.customer_id = c.customer_id, which means that only the rows that have the same customer ID in both tables will be included in the output. The output will have four columns: customer_id, name, account_id, and overdraft_amt. The output will have four rows, corresponding to the four customers who have accounts in the account table.

A Gold table is a table that contains highly refined and aggregated data that powers analytics, machine learning, and production applications. It represents data that has been transformed into knowledge, rather than just information. A Gold table is typically the final output of a medallion lakehouse architecture, where data flows from Bronze to Silver to Gold tables, with each layer improving the structure and quality of data. A job that queries aggregated data designed to feed into a dashboard is an example of a data workload that will utilize a Gold table as its source, as it requires data that is ready for consumption and analysis. The other options are either data workloads that will use a Bronze or Silver table as their source, or data workloads that will produce a Gold table as their output. References: Databricks Documentation - What is the medallion lakehouse architecture?, Databricks Documentation - What is a Medallion Architecture?, K21Academy - Delta Lake Architecture & Azure Databricks Workspace.

 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]

Databricks Repos is a visual Git client and API in Databricks that supports common Git operations such as commit, pull, push, branch management, and visual comparison of diffs when committing1. However, merge is not supported in the Git dialog2. You need to use the Repos UI or your Git provider to merge branches3. Merge is a way to combine the commit history from one branch into another branch1. During a merge, a merge conflict is encountered when Git cannot automatically combine code from one branch into another. Merge conflicts require manual resolution before a merge can be completed1. References: 4: Run Git operations on Databricks Repos4, 1: CI/CD techniques with Git and Databricks Repos1, 3: Collaborate in Repos3, 2: Databricks Repos - What it is and how we can use it2.

Databricks Repos is a visual Git client and API in Databricks that supports common Git operations such as commit, pull, push, merge, and branch management. However, to clone a remote Git repository to a Databricks repo, you must use the Databricks UI or API. You cannot clone a Git repo using the CLI through a cluster’s web terminal, as the files won’t display in the Databricks UI1. References: 1: Run Git operations on Databricks Repos | Databricks on AWS2

The only option that is stored in the Databricks customer’s cloud account is data. Data is stored in the customer’s cloud storage service, such as AWS S3 or Azure Data Lake Storage. The customer has full control and ownership of their data and can access it directly from their cloud account.

Option A is not correct, as the Databricks web application is hosted and managed by Databricks on their own cloud infrastructure. The customer does not need to install or maintain the web application, but only needs to access it through a web browser.

Option B is not correct, as the cluster management metadata is stored and managed by Databricks on their own cloud infrastructure. The cluster management metadata includes information such as cluster configuration, status, logs, and metrics. The customer can view and manage their clusters through the Databricks web application, but does not have direct access to the cluster management metadata.

Option C is not correct, as the repos are stored and managed by Databricks on their own cloud infrastructure. Repos are version-controlled repositories that store code and data files for Databricks projects. The customer can create and manage their repos through the Databricks web application, but does not have direct access to the repos.

Option E is not correct, as the notebooks are stored and managed by Databricks on their own cloud infrastructure. Notebooks are interactive documents that contain code, text, and visualizations for Databricks workflows. The customer can create and manage their notebooks through the Databricks web application, but does not have direct access to the notebooks.

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.

Auto Loader is a Structured Streaming source that incrementally and efficiently processes new data files as they arrive in cloud storage. It supports both Python and SQL in Delta Live Tables, which are ideal for building streaming data pipelines. Auto Loader can handle near real-time ingestion of millions of files per hour and provide exactly-once guarantees when writing data into Delta Lake. Auto Loader is not designed for dashboard, machine learning, serverless, or batch workloads, which have different requirements and characteristics. References: What is Auto Loader?, Delta Live Tables

A webhook alert destination is a notification destination that allows Databricks to send HTTP POST requests to a third-party endpoint when an alert is triggered. This enables the data engineer to integrate Databricks alerts with their preferred messaging or collaboration platform, such as Slack, Microsoft Teams, or PagerDuty. To set up a webhook alert destination, the data engineer needs to create and configure a webhook connector in their messaging platform, and then add the webhook URL to the Databricks notification destination. After that, the data engineer can create an alert for their Databricks SQL query, and select the webhook alert destination as the notification destination. The alert can be configured with a custom condition, such as when the number of stores with $0 in sales is greater than zero, and a custom message template, such as “Alert: {number_of_stores} stores have $0 in sales”. The alert can also be configured with a recurrence interval, such as every hour, to check the query result periodically. When the alert condition is met, the data engineer and their team will receive a notification via the messaging webhook, with the custom message and a link to the Databricks SQL query. The other options are either not suitable for sending notifications via a messaging webhook (A, B, E), or not suitable for sending recurring notifications ©. References: Databricks Documentation - Manage notification destinations, Databricks Documentation - Create alerts for Databricks SQL queries, Databricks Documentation - Configure alert conditions and messages.