Databricks Data Engineer Associate · 6% practice allocation
5 free sample questions from the Databricks Intelligence Platform domain, with answers and explanations. The full Data Engineer Associate bank has 300 questions across 7 domains. Questions are scenario-based and written from the official Databricks exam guide.
Which compute option is purpose-built for running SQL queries and BI dashboards efficiently?
SQL warehouses are optimized compute for SQL analytics and BI. The other options aren't SQL-serving compute.
A data engineer at a financial services company needs to implement a data retention policy requiring that all historical versions of a Delta Lake table older than 7 days are permanently purged to comply with data privacy regulations. The engineer plans to run VACUUM with a 7-day retention threshold. Which of the following considerations should the engineer be aware of before running this command? (Select TWO)
VACUUM deletes unreferenced Parquet data files older than the retention period, permanently removing the ability to time travel to those versions. Additionally, any long-running reader that holds a reference to files older than the retention window may fail after VACUUM completes, because those files no longer exist. Option B is wrong; VACUUM does not delete transaction log (_delta_log) JSON or checkpoint files — it only deletes orphaned data files. Option C is incorrect; Databricks does not automatically back up vacuumed files. Option A is wrong; VACUUM only deletes files NOT referenced by the current or any retained version — files that are part of the current table state are never deleted by VACUUM regardless of their age.
In the medallion architecture, which layer holds raw, minimally processed ingested data?
Bronze holds raw ingested data; silver holds cleaned/conformed data; gold holds business-level aggregates. There is no standard 'platinum' layer (D).
A data engineer is onboarding to a Databricks workspace and wants to understand which components are managed by Databricks in its cloud account versus which components run inside the customer's cloud account. Which of the following correctly identifies a component that lives in the Databricks-managed CONTROL PLANE?
Option A is correct: the Databricks web application (UI), REST APIs, job scheduler, cluster manager, and notebook server are all hosted in the Databricks-managed control plane in Databricks' own cloud account. Option B is wrong: the Spark driver and executor processes run on cluster VMs in the customer's data plane (the customer's cloud account). Option D is wrong: raw Parquet/Delta files reside in the customer's cloud object storage, which is part of the data plane. Option C is wrong: cloud object storage buckets are customer-owned and part of the data plane. Option E is wrong: cluster VMs, their network interfaces, and the VPC/VNet are provisioned in the customer's cloud account as part of the data plane.
A data engineer is designing a Delta Lake table for an event logging system. The team inserts millions of small individual event records throughout the day using streaming micro-batches, resulting in thousands of tiny Parquet files accumulating over several weeks. Which of the following approaches BEST addresses this small-file problem while maintaining Delta Lake capabilities? (Select TWO)
Correct: (E) The OPTIMIZE command explicitly compacts small Parquet files into larger target-size files (default ~1 GB), directly solving the small-file problem. It can be scheduled to run periodically without disrupting reads. (B) Auto Optimize combines Optimized Writes (which reduces the number of files written per operation) and Auto Compaction (which compacts files after writes), proactively preventing and reducing small-file accumulation without manual scheduling. Wrong: (A) Converting to CSV would lose all Delta Lake features (ACID, time travel, schema enforcement) and CSV does not append to a single file—it creates many files just like Delta. (D) Running VACUUM with 0-hour retention deletes old data files but does NOT consolidate or compact existing small files; it would also bypass the default 7-day safety threshold and could break time travel. (C) Increasing the number of partitions would create MORE small files, not fewer—this worsens the problem.
The free Data Engineer Associate practice test mixes about 20 questions weighted like the exam. The full 300-question bank adds instant grading, flashcards and a timed mock exam.