Free Practice Questions for Databricks Databricks-Certified-Data-Engineer-Associate Exam

Databricks Asset Bundles use YAML configuration, and Databricks documentation specifies that bundle configuration is expressed in a root databricks.yml file. The resources mapping is used to define supported objects such as jobs , and job definitions include keys like name and tasks. Tasks in a job are defined under the tasks key, and a notebook task is represented with notebook_task and notebook_path. Option A is the only answer written in the correct general YAML bundle structure and matches the documented style of defining bundle resources. Options B and C use JSON- and Python-style syntax rather than bundle YAML. Option D uses Terraform/HCL-style syntax, which is not the Databricks Asset Bundle format. While a full production bundle often includes more top-level settings such as bundle, targets, or workspace, the question asks which format is valid, and only option A matches the documented Databricks Asset Bundles configuration model.

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A table update trigger is designed for this dependency. Databricks Lakeflow Jobs can monitor one or more supported Unity Catalog tables and start a job when the monitored tables are updated. Supported changes include data updates, merges, and deletes, so the Silver pipeline can begin only after the Bronze table receives new or changed data. This event-driven approach avoids polling and does not require a continuously running cluster. A continuous trigger keeps the job running rather than reacting to a completed table update. A scheduled trigger runs according to time, regardless of whether the Bronze table changed. A file arrival trigger monitors new files in a Unity Catalog storage location, not updates to an upstream table. Therefore, option A directly implements the required table-to-pipeline orchestration.

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With schema evolution enabled, Auto Loader detects source fields that are not present in the current schema and evolves the destination schema to include them. The new userAgent field is therefore added to the Delta table as a column, and values from newly processed records are written to it. Existing rows cannot be retroactively populated because the earlier source records did not contain that field, so they receive NULL for the newly added column. The column is consequently nullable unless a later transformation explicitly enforces another constraint. Option A describes behavior without suitable schema evolution. Option B incorrectly claims that historical rows receive a default value and that the column becomes non-nullable. Option D contradicts schema-evolution behavior. Therefore, option C correctly describes how the new JSON field is handled.

In Unity Catalog, managed tables and external tables have different lifecycle behavior. When you drop a managed table , Databricks removes the table metadata and also schedules deletion of the underlying managed data files according to the managed-table retention behavior. By contrast, when you drop an external table , Unity Catalog removes only the table metadata and does not delete the underlying files in cloud storage. This distinction exists specifically so that external data can remain available to systems outside Databricks. In the scenario described, ephemeral staging outputs that should disappear completely are best represented by managed tables, while tables backed by shared cloud storage should be external tables so that dropping them does not remove files used by downstream jobs. Therefore, option C is the correct answer. Options A, B, and D contradict documented Unity Catalog behavior because external table files are not automatically deleted, while managed table data is lifecycle-managed by Databricks.

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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

For small-scale, ad hoc Python workloads that run frequently and should start quickly and stop without leaving idle infrastructure running, serverless compute is the best fit. Databricks documentation explains that serverless compute allows users to run workloads without provisioning compute resources manually , and Databricks automatically allocates and manages the required resources. This improves startup and scaling speed and minimizes idle time, which directly matches the requirement that compute should “wind down quickly” after the work completes. Databricks also recommends serverless compute broadly when the workload is supported because it is the simplest and most reliable option. An all-purpose cluster is better suited to interactive collaborative development and can remain running longer than needed. A job cluster is ephemeral and often a good batch choice, but it still requires more explicit configuration than serverless and is not as optimized for minimal operational overhead. A SQL warehouse is intended for SQL workloads, not general ad hoc Python script execution. Therefore, serverless compute is the most appropriate choice.

Delta Lake provides schema enforcement on write, preventing incompatible data from being silently added to a table. When schema evolution is explicitly enabled through the appropriate write or ingestion configuration, new optional columns can be added without dropping and recreating the existing table. Delta Lake also maintains a transaction log containing committed table versions, enabling table-history inspection and time-travel queries for debugging or auditing, subject to retention settings. A plain Parquet table does not provide Delta’s transactional history or equivalent write enforcement. Recreating a Delta table whenever columns change is unnecessary and can disrupt its history. Auto Loader can detect evolving source schemas, but an external table with schema inference alone does not provide the complete set of required Delta capabilities. Therefore, option D is correct.

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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.