Mastering DP-500 Exam: Upcoming Changes on February 6th
Some of the skills measured for the DP-500 Azure Enterprise Data Analyst Associate certification are changing on February 6th 2023 (thanks for the heads-up from Kevin Chant (t). Don’t panic, not much has changed (phew…) and comparing the pre-February 6th skills measured with the updated skills there are only 2 updates. FYI Non-English versions of the exam will be updated up to 8 weeks after the English language version.
Click here for the official page including the updated skills measured document.
Changes
I’ll include the skills measured changes below, there are slight adjustments to the audience profile but nothing I feel needs calling out to be honest.
| Skill area | Change |
|---|---|
| Govern and administer a data analytics environment | Minor |
| Optimize enterprise-scale data models | Minor |
Govern and administer a data analytics environment
In the Implement and manage a data analytics environment (25–30%) category. The following change is just a name change, from Azure Purview to Microsoft Purview.
Pre-Change
Govern and administer a data analytics environment
• Identify data sources in Azure by using Azure Purview
Post-Change
Govern and administer a data analytics environment
• Identify data sources in Azure by using Microsoft Purview
Optimize enterprise-scale data models
In the Implement and manage data models (25–30%) category. The change here is to add in a call out to Query Folding. Query folding is the feature which allows Power BI to push down Power Query transformation logic into the data source itself. The desire here is to use the source systems resources (which could be many times that of Power BI) to do the data transformation before it hits Power BI. In the context of the DP-500 I would say this would be concentrating on query folding down to the Synapse SQL Pools (both Dedicated & Serverless support query folding). I’ll link to Nikola Ilic’s (Data Mozart) blog post here on Query Folding and the official documentation here.
Pre-Change
Implement incremental refresh
Post-Change
Implement incremental refresh (including the use of query folding)
Exam Resources
If you’re looking to take the exam then here are some useful resources:
