How I prepared for the Azure Data Engineer Associate (DP-200 and DP-201) exams
As the title says, this article is about how I personally prepared for the aforementioned exams and not about how one should best prepare for the exams. I have no idea what the best way to prepare is, I am still trying to find out what works best for myself, let alone come up with a universal approach. I am not even sure what I would change if I had to do it all over again
These were not the first certification exams I ever sat, I got some Oracle certifications a lifetime ago and I also had the experience of the Azure Administrator (AZ-104) exam. So I went down the path of reading the documentation, taking some practice tests, failing and reiterating. These are the resources I used:
- Exam skills outline: DP-200 https://query.prod.cms.rt.microsoft.com/cms/api/am/binary/RE3Vzx2 and DP-201 https://query.prod.cms.rt.microsoft.com/cms/api/am/binary/RE3VRMb
- Learning Paths for the DP-200/DP-201 exams: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/learn/certifications/exams/dp-200
- DP-200/DP-201 Exam Study Guide: https://ravikirans.com/dp-200-azure-exam-study-guide/ https://ravikirans.com/dp-201-azure-exam-study-guide/
- Whizlabs practice tests: https://www.whizlabs.com/microsoft-azure-certification-dp-200/practice-tests/ https://www.whizlabs.com/microsoft-azure-certification-dp-201/practice-tests/
- Microsoft Official Practice Tests: https://eu1.mindhub.com/dp-200-microsoft-implementing-an-azure-data-solution-microsoft-official-practice-test/p/MU-DP-200 https://eu1.mindhub.com/dp-201-microsoft-designing-an-azure-data-solution-microsoft-official-practice-test/p/MU-DP-201
- Clicking around
Exam skills outline
The first problem I faced with the DP-200 and DP-201 exams is that the exam skills outline document available on the Microsoft website is not detailed enough. For instance one of the measured skills for DP-201 is ‘configure Azure Monitor alerts’, but it is not clear if it refers to the classic alerts, the new unified alerts or both (I did not find the answer to this question yet, so I ended up learning both for the exam). Another problem is that it is not clear what exactly one needs to know for some of the skills. For instance for DP-201, I was never able to understand what they mean by “identify where processing should take place, such as at the source, at the destination, or in transit”. Even after sitting the exam, I can’t link any question I got to this skill and cannot think of any learning resource related to it. Finally, I believe there are some skills in the document which are left overs from the time when other services were covered in the exam, for instance (once more for DP-201) ‘design and provision compute resources’. Again, no question comes to mind related to such a skill and the link in the study guide points to Azure Batch, which is not needed for these exams (not to be confused with batch processing, which is for sure needed)
Learning Paths
Learning Paths are not of much use in my opinion. They are somewhat useful only if you do not know anything about particular services (like me at the time), as they are extremely high level and only give you scant knowledge. On one hand not all services are included — there is nothing on Data Factory (although you can find some modules for it under Learn), on the other hand there is too much detail on others — the Databricks learning path has way more information than what is needed for the exams. You could spend a day or two browsing through, but only once (if you plan to renew your certification, which you must do every three years). I will never do it again
Study Guides
I thought of googling each skill to find the relevant documentation, but then I realised that many out there must have already gone through this process, so I looked for study guides (a collection of links for each skill). I did not find any perfect one. I decided to go with the ones of Ravikiran as a starting base. However, they have several problems:
- There is usually only one link for each topic, which is not enough. What I did is read the information from that link and then looked on the left pane (the contents) and go to various other links (usually in the same chapter) with related information (it is pretty clear in most cases which other links are relevant). Also, at the bottom of each page there are suggested links which can sometimes be interesting. Hence even though there is only one link in the guide, it could take several hours to read up on a topic
- Some of the links point to courses on the Pluralsight website which are not free (Ravikiran is a trainer there). I did not get a subscription, not even the free seven day trial they offer. While it is arguably more difficult to find free learning resources for those topics, googling them will get you to the corresponding (or related) Azure documentation (and also other sites) and then you can follow the ‘from link to link’ approach I mentioned before
- Finally, some links seem to point to topics totally unrelated to the skill. I followed the same approach as above
Whizlabs practice tests
Whizlabs practice tests are good in general, but they have mistakes, especially the newer DP-201 ones. I identified a few, raised it to them, they agreed with me and said they would fix them. However, since I managed to find some mistakes, without having in depth knowledge and experience, there is a high chance there is more of them I was not able to identify. Another problem with their questions is that the answers are sometimes not explained (they say ‘since this is clearly mentioned in the documentation, the other options are false’), but you can search on the web and find things on your own. Anyway, I believe they are a good resource for the price. More importantly, I learned about some topics that you cannot deduce are needed based on the exam skills outline (I could not at least), but they are indeed needed and did come up in my exam, for instance Big Data Architectures in the DP-201 exam (https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/architecture/data-guide/big-data/
Microsoft Official Practice Tests
The Official Practice Tests are good for learning, but far from the actual exam questions on many occasions, which is surprising, as I expected them to be the closest. For example they contain a high number of questions on data encryption using your own key, but my DP-200 exam had nothing close. It might have been a matter of chance, however, there were several topics for which I noticed this, so I find it highly unlikely to be a coincidence. A second thing I noticed about these tests is that each of the options which are part of the answer is explained and the provided links are better than those of Whizlabs. However, they also have mistakes, more subtle ones, and I did not find any way to contact them for raising it. And a final remark: they are expensive and you buy access for one or two months only, not lifetime, as is the case of Whizlabs
Clicking around
One last thing I did is click around in the portal, which is probably a must. I went through every blade of the services needed for the exam and checked what options were under it. I obviously remember only a small part of them, but it did help me to get a better grasp of the services
Conclusions
As stated in the beginning, even after going through all of the above, I would still not be able to offer advice on what works best when preparing for these exams. I was successful at both of them, so it did work for me, but there is always a fair amount of luck involved. I view this preparation as a journey where everyone has to find their own path to success
