Pass the Databricks Databricks Certification Databricks-Certified-Professional-Data-Engineer Questions and answers with CertsForce

This is the correct answer because it is where in the Spark UI one can diagnose a performance problem induced by not leveraging predicate push-down. Predicate push-down is an optimization technique that allows filtering data at the source before loading it into memory or processing it further. This can improve performance and reduce I/O costs by avoiding reading unnecessary data. To leverage predicate push-down, one should use supported data sources and formats, such as Delta Lake, Parquet, or JDBC, and use filter expressions that can be pushed down to the source. To diagnose a performance problem induced by not leveraging predicate push-down, one can use the Spark UI to access the Query Detail screen, which shows information about a SQL query executed on a Spark cluster. The Query Detail screen includes the Physical Plan, which is the actual plan executed by Spark to perform the query. The Physical Plan shows the physical operators used by Spark, such as Scan, Filter, Project, or Aggregate, and their input and output statistics, such as rows and bytes. By interpreting the Physical Plan, one can see if the filter expressions are pushed down to the source or not, and how much data is read or processed by each operator. Verified References: [Databricks Certified Data Engineer Professional], under “Spark Core” section; Databricks Documentation, under “Predicate pushdown” section; Databricks Documentation, under “Query detail page” section.

The Databricks CLI allows users to manage clusters using command-line commands. The correct command for creating a cluster follows a specific format.

Key Components in the Command:

Command Type: databricks compute create is the correct syntax for creating a new compute resource (cluster).

Runtime Version: '14.3.x-scala2.12' specifies the Databricks runtime to use.

Workers: --num-workers 5 sets the number of worker nodes to 5.

Node Type: --node-type-id i3.xlarge defines the hardware configuration.

Cluster Name: --cluster-name DataEngineer_cluster assigns a recognizable name to the cluster.

Evaluation of Options:

Option A (databricks clusters create ...)

Incorrect: databricks clusters create is not a valid command in the Databricks CLI v0.205.

The correct CLI command for cluster creation is databricks compute create.

Option B (databricks clusters add ...)

Incorrect: databricks clusters add is not a valid CLI command.

Option C (databricks compute add ...)

Incorrect: databricks compute add is not a valid CLI command.

Option D (databricks compute create ...)

Correct: databricks compute create is the correct command for creating a cluster.

Conclusion:

The correct command to create a cluster with five workers, an i3.xlarge node type, and Databricks runtime 14.3.x-scala2.12 is:

databricks compute create 14.3.x-scala2.12 --num-workers 5 --node-type-id i3.xlarge --cluster-name Data Engineer_cluster

Thus, the correct answer is D.

 This is the correct answer because Delta Lake uses a transaction log to store metadata about each table, including min and max statistics for each column in each data file. The Delta engine can use this information to quickly identify which files to load based on a filter condition, without scanning the entire table or the file footers. This is called data skipping and it can improve query performance significantly. Verified References: [Databricks Certified Data Engineer Professional], under “Delta Lake” section; [Databricks Documentation], under “Optimizations - Data Skipping” section.

In the Transaction log, Delta Lake captures statistics for each data file of the table. These statistics indicate per file:

- Total number of records

- Minimum value in each column of the first 32 columns of the table

- Maximum value in each column of the first 32 columns of the table

- Null value counts for in each column of the first 32 columns of the table

When a query with a selective filter is executed against the table, the query optimizer uses these statistics to generate the query result. it leverages them to identify data files that may contain records matching the conditional filter.

For the SELECT query in the question, The transaction log is scanned for min and max statistics for the price column

Comprehensive and Detailed Explanation From Exact Extract:

Exact extract: “If no trigger is specified, the default processing-time trigger runs micro-batches as fast as possible.”

Exact extract: “Trigger once processes all available data once and then stops.”

In Delta Lake, a shallow clone creates a new table by copying the metadata of the source table without duplicating the data files. When the vacuum command is run on the source table, it removes old data files that are no longer needed to maintain the transactional log's integrity, potentially including files referenced by the shallow clone's metadata. If these files are purged, the shallow cloned tables will reference non-existent data files, causing them to stop working properly. This highlights the dependency of shallow clones on the source table's data files and the impact of data management operations like vacuum on these clones.

The code creates a view called email_ltv that selects the email and ltv columns from a table called user_ltv, which has the following schema: email STRING, age INT, ltv INT. The code also uses the CASE WHEN expression to replace the email values with the string “REDACTED” if the user is not a member of the marketing group. The user who executes the query is not a member of the marketing group, so they will only see the email and ltv columns, and the email column will contain the string “REDACTED” in each row. Verified References: [Databricks Certified Data Engineer Professional], under “Lakehouse” section; Databricks Documentation, under “CASE expression” section.

The provided MERGE statement is a classic implementation of a Type 2 SCD in a data warehousing context. In this approach, historical data is preserved by keeping old records (marking them as not current) and adding new records for changes. Specifically, when a match is found and there's a change in the address, the existing record in the customers table is updated to mark it as no longer current (current = false), and an end date is assigned (end_date = staged_updates.effective_date). A new record for the customer is then inserted with the updated information, marked as current. This method ensures that the full history of changes to customer information is maintained in the table, allowing for time-based analysis of customer data.

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/databricks/security/auth-authz/access-control/cluster-acl

https://docs.databricks.com/en/security/auth-authz/access-control/cluster-acl.html

The approach that would simplify the identification of the changed records is to replace the current overwrite logic with a merge statement to modify only those records that have changed, and write logic to make predictions on the changed records identified by the change data feed. This approach leverages the Delta Lake features of merge and change data feed, which are designed to handle upserts and track row-level changes in a Delta table12. By using merge, the data engineering team can avoid overwriting the entire table every night, and only update or insert the records that have changed in the source data. By using change data feed, the ML team can easily access the change events that have occurred in the customer_churn_params table, and filter them by operation type (update or insert) and timestamp. This way, they can only make predictions on the records that have changed in the past 24 hours, and avoid re-processing the unchanged records.

The other options are not as simple or efficient as the proposed approach, because:

Option A would require applying the churn model to all rows in the customer_churn_params table, which would be wasteful and redundant. It would also require implementing logic to perform an upsert into the predictions table, which would be more complex than using the merge statement.

Option B would require converting the batch job to a Structured Streaming job, which would involve changing the data ingestion and processing logic. It would also require using the complete output mode, which would output the entire result table every time there is a change in the source data, which would be inefficient and costly.

Option C would require calculating the difference between the previous model predictions and the current customer_churn_params on a key identifying unique customers, which would be computationally expensive and prone to errors. It would also require storing and accessing the previous predictions, which would add extra storage and I/O costs.

Option D would require modifying the overwrite logic to include a field populated by calling spark.sql.functions.current_timestamp() as data are being written, which would add extra complexity and overhead to the data engineering job. It would also require using this field to identify records written on a particular date, which would be less accurate and reliable than using the change data feed.