Are you an app developer, AI professional or maybe a data engineer looking to validate domain skill in Microsoft Azure? Well, you are at the right place, as the Microsoft Certified Azure Data Engineer DP-203 certification helps you achieve all these domain expertise.
This blog will walk you through everything you need to know about the DP-203 certification: why this exam, who should take this certification, the exam overview, detailed syllabus, study materials to refer to and how to prepare for this exam.
So let’s dive in.
All About Microsoft Certified Data Engineer DP-203 certification exam
The DP-203: Data Engineering on Microsoft Azure Certification is an advanced-level certificate exam by Microsoft Azure. It helps you learn how to develop analytic solutions by integrating, transforming, and consolidating data from various systems into one structure. As an Azure Data Engineer, you will be responsible for:
- Guiding enterprises to understand and explore data
- Build, maintain, and secure data pipelines
- Use Azure services and languages effectively.
- Build, enhance, and cleanse datasets to conduct analysis.
- Ensure high-performing, reliable, efficient, and organized data stores and pipelines.
- Identify the scope of data issues and reduce data loss.
- Optimize data platforms
Apart from this, the DP-203 also measures your ability to perform mission-critical tasks like:
- Implement and design data storage
- Develop data processes
- Build and deploy data security.
- Optimize and monitor data storage and processing.
Know About: MICROSOFT AZURE CERTIFICATION PATH updated in 2022
What are the skills you will gain from the DP-203 certification?
The DP-203 certification exam will help you gain a myriad of skills and abilities to validate your subject matter expertise in Azure. For starters, you will get the scope to dive deeper into:
- Various data platform solutions
- Fundamentals of storage management in Azure
- Building storage accounts
- How to choose the correct model for data
- How to use data platforms to achieve business needs
- Using Azure Synapse Pipeline and Azure Data Factory to design and handle data pipelines in cloud infrastructure.
- Using modern architectural patterns and the Azure Synapse Pipeline to build Data Warehouses.
Additionally, the DP-203 certification also imparts skills like:
- Development abilities for Azure storage
- Creating Azure compute solutions
- Connect third-party and Azure Services
- Deploy security measures for Azure
- Monitor and secure Azure solutions
- Implement Azure technology and tools that best suit business needs and help scale effortlessly.
- Define best practices in data engineering.
- Describe the differences between on-prem and cloud solutions
- Create and deploy data storage and security
Who should take the DP-203 certification exam?
DP-203 Data Engineering on Microsoft Azure can be the perfect milestone if you are:
- A business stakeholder who wants to amplify and enhance business outcomes by applying data and app analytics.
- An AI developer who wants to build cognitive apps by gathering sufficient data from the ground.
- A developer and data engineer wishing to design and deploy data solutions using Azure services.
- Microsoft Azure experts who want to gain data engineering skills and help stakeholders understand and explore data.
Why should you take the DP-203 certification?
With the DP-203 certification exam, you can unlock innumerable career benefits with just one stepping stone. To begin with, the DP-203 exam:
- Opens doors to innumerable job opportunities as more and more companies are switching to Azure infrastructure while scaling up.
- Helps you delve deeper into the Microsoft ecosystem and broaden your architectural and engineering horizons.
- Hatches a yearly salary of as high as $ 100,000 and increases the chances of promotion.
- Strengthens your position as a valuable asset of the company since this certification will help you improve business processes and increase operational efficiency.
- Kickstarts your journey in data engineering while increasing your market value through the Microsoft validation.
DP-203 Certification Exam Overview
Here’s a quick view of the DP-203: Data Engineering on Microsoft Azure Certification exam format, exam duration, etc:
In addition to this, the certification has one-year validity. No prior certification is required. However, you should know how to transform, consolidate, and integrate unstructured and structured data from myriad systems into one structure and use it to build relevant analytic solutions.
Prerequisites of the DP-203 Certification exam
You don’t need any prior hands-on experience or skills to be eligible for the DP-203 certification. Although, Microsoft lists a few subjects and fundamentals that you need to cover before you get on the act:
- How to integrate, consolidate, and convert various unstructured and structured data systems into one meaningful structure.
- Use the data structures to build relevant analytics solutions.
- Parallel processing
- Patterns of data architecture
- In-depth knowledge of data processing languages. For example, Python, Scala, SQL, etc.
DP-203 Certification Exam Domains
The DP-203 certification exam covers four domains and carries specific weightage in the exam. Here’s what the breakup looks like:
| Domain | Weightage |
| Implementing and designing data storage | 40-45% |
| Designing and developing data processing | 25-30% |
| Deploying and designing data security | 10-15% |
| Optimizing and monitoring data processing and data storage | 10-15% |
Each of these domain has several subtopics that includes:
- Implementing and designing data storage
– Designing a data storage structure
– Creating a partition strategy
– Building the serving serving layer
– Implementing physical structures of data storage
– Deploying logical data structures
– Implementing serving layers
- Designing and developing data processing
– Transforming and ingesting data
– Developing and creating solutions for batch processing
– Developing solutions for stream processing
– Handling pipelines and batches
- Deploying and designing data security
– Designing security for data standards and policies
– Deploying data security
- Optimizing and monitoring data processing and data storage
– Monitoring data processing and data storage
– Troubleshooting and optimizing data processing and data storage
Study materials to refer for DP-203 certification exam
Microsoft offers a complete package to give you a head start on your Azure data engineering journey. To begin with, you can explore the Microsoft Learning Paths. These are detailed short courses covering the dp-203 exam domains & dp-203 exam questions in detail. Here are a few of them:
- Azure for a data engineer
- Storing data in Azure
- Integrating data with Azure factory or Azure Synapse Analytics
- Using Data Warehouses through Azure Synapse Analytics
- Data engineering through Azure Synapse Apache Spark Pools
- Data engineering using Azure Databricks
- Use Azure Data Lake Storage Gen 2 for large-scale data processing.
Try these Free DP-203 DATA ENGINEERING ON MICROSOFT AZURE Certification Exam Questions
Second, you can go for a paid instructor-led video course. The DP-203T00: Data Engineering on Microsoft Azure is a four-day intermediate-level course that helps you dive deeper into concepts like creating real-time analytical solutions, ingesting data using Azure Data Factory or Azure Synapse pipelines, exploring saved data files in Data Lake, etc.
Additionally, you can watch Microsoft videos on Data Exposed and other Microsoft Learn shows.
Third, for additional and in-depth information on Azure data engineering chapters, you can refer to Microsoft Docs like:
- Azure Data Lake storage
- Azure Databricks
- Azure stream analytics
- Azure Monitor
- Event Hubs
Fourth, for the final preparation phase, attempt the DP-203 exam questions , Microsoft exam sandbox and DP-203 practice test papers to get the demo experience of the real DP-203 certification exam and test your knowledge.
Fifth, you can sharpen your practical skills for Azure data engineering with GitHub’s hands-on labs exclusively designed for the DP-203 certification. Along with this, you can always reach out to your peers or professionals through Microsoft Tech communities:
- Microsoft Learn
- Microsoft Q&A
- Analytics on Azure
- Azure Synapse Analytics
How to prepare for the DP-203 certification exam?
If the resources and syllabus make you nervous or overwhelmed, then this section is for you. Passing Microsoft certifications is no rocket science if you have the right strategy up your sleeves. The cherry on top: you don’t need any prior work experience to be eligible. All you need is to sharpen your Azure fundamentals and keep the concepts at your fingertips.
- Don’t jump into the exam domains straightaway. First, go through the Microsoft study guide and understand the exam objective. Then be well versed in the syllabus structure.
- Chalk out a timetable while preparing the exam domains. Make sure you don’t leave any chapters or subtopics. For better clarity, you can always refer to Microsoft docs, videos, and YouTube short videos and tutorials.
- Once you are halfway through the preparation, take a break and analyze your preparation so far. Now match it with the skills and concepts mentioned in the prerequisite list. Gain in-depth knowledge of data processing languages, parallel processing, data architectures, etc.
- For the prerequisite preparations, the best way is to apply your knowledge using hands-on labs and the Azure Sandbox. You can experiment, test, and play around with the Azure infrastructure and get familiar with real-world scenarios.
- When you think you are confident with your preparation, go for DP-203 practice tests and sample papers. Go for DP-203 exam questions self-assessment, relearn the gaps and errors, and then attempt again.
Once you are satisfied with the scores on the practice test, apply for the real exam and add a feather to your cap.
Sample Questions on DP-203 Certification
Domain : Design and implement data storage
Q2 : You are working on Azure Data Lake Store Gen1. Suddenly, you realize the need to know the schema of the external data. Which of the following plug-in would you use to know the external data schema?
A. Ipv4_lookup
B. Mysql_request
C. Pivot
D. Narrow
E. infer_storage_schema
Correct Answer: E
Explanation:
infer_storage_schema is the plug-in that helps infer the schema based on the external file contents; when the external data schema is unknown.
Option A is incorrect. The ipv4_lookup plugin checks for an IPv4 value in a lookup table and returns the matched rows.
Option B is incorrect. The mysql_request plugin transfers a SQL query to a MySQL Server network endpoint and returns the 1st row set in the result.
Option C is incorrect. Pivot plug-in is used to rotate a table by changing the unique values from 1 column in the input table into a number of different columns in the output table and perform aggregations wherever needed on any remaining column values that are desired in the final output.
Option D is incorrect. This plug-in is used to unpivot a wide table into a table with only three columns.
Option E is correct. infer_storage_schema plug-in can be used to infer the schema of external data and return it as a CSL schema string.
References: To know more about the external tables and plug-in, please visit the below-given link:
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/data-explorer/kusto/management/external-tables-azurestorage-azuredatalake
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/data-explorer/kusto/query/inferstorageschemaplugin
Domain : Design and implement data security
Q3 : You work in Azure Synapse Analytics dedicated SQL pool that has a table titled Pilots. Now you want to restrict the user access in such a way that users in ‘IndianAnalyst’ role can see only the pilots from India. Which of the following would you add to the solution?
A. Table partitions
B. Encryption
C. Column-Level security
D. Row-level security
E. Data Masking
Correct Answer: D
Explanation:
Row-level security is applicable on databases to allow fine-grained access to the rows in a database table for restricted control upon who could access which type of data.
Option A is incorrect. Table partitions are generally used to group similar data.
Option B is incorrect. Encryption is used for security purposes.
Option C is incorrect. Column level security is used to restrict data access at the column level. In the given scenario, we need to restrict access at the row level.
Option D is correct. In this scenario, we need to restrict access on a row basis, i.e only for the pilots from India, there Row-level security is the right solution.
Option E is incorrect. Sensitive data exposure can be limited by masking it to unauthorized users using SQL Database dynamic data masking.
References: To know more about Row-level security, please visit the below-given links:
https://azure.microsoft.com/en-in/resources/videos/row-level-security-in-azure-sql-database/
https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/azure-synapse-analytics/how-to-implement-row-level-security-in-serverless-sql-pools/ba-p/2354759
FAQs
Can I attempt the DP-203 exam questions if I am a beginner in Python?
We would suggest you gain a strong foothold in Python before applying for the DP-203. Microsoft’s prerequisite list requires you to have knowledge of Python, Scala and SQL.
What do Azure data engineers do?
As an Azure data engineer, you will be responsible for:
- Build, maintain, and secure data pipelines
- Use Azure services and languages effectively.
- Ensure high-performing, reliable, efficient, and organized data stores and pipelines.
- Identify the scope of data issues and reduce data loss.
- Optimize data platforms
What could be the next step after DP-203?
Once you qualify for DP-203, you can try the Microsoft Certified: Azure Data Engineer Associate. Here, you can level up your Azure data engineering skills.
Whizlab’s Package
Finding authentic and updated content for so many line items can give you a hard time. With this in mind, Whizlabs offers an exhausting training course to make your DP-203 prep a breeze and provide a direction to your learning path. You will find:
- Four full-length practice tests with 240+ unique questions,
- 44+ video lectures created by Microsoft professionals and experts
- 14+ hands-on labs
- Azure sandbox to apply and experiment with your data engineering skills
- Support from subject matter experts, and unlimited access to a year on Whizlabs resources.
Summary
Interestingly, DP-203 certification plays a prime role in garnishing your credentials and enhancing your value in the job market. Organizations of myriad types are increasingly switching to Azure cloud infrastructure because of its dynamic and easy to adapt nature and plethora of services and solutions.
It means that the demand for Azure professionals, especially data engineers and developers will increase significantly in the time to come.
We hope this preparation guide, will helpful for you in your preparation of DP-203 certification exam and that you pass the certification on the first attempt.
For further queries about the DP-203 exam feel free to comment us!
- 7 Pro Tips for Managing and Reducing Datadog Costs - June 24, 2024
- Become an NVIDIA Certified Associate in Generative AI and LLMs - June 12, 2024
- What is Azure Data Factory? - June 5, 2024
- An Introduction to Databricks Apache Spark - May 24, 2024
- What is Microsoft Fabric? - May 16, 2024
- Which Kubernetes Certification is Right for You? - April 10, 2024
- Top 5 Topics to Prepare for the CKA Certification Exam - April 8, 2024
- 7 Databricks Certifications: Which One Should I Choose? - April 8, 2024