A junior data engineer is working to implement logic for a Lakehouse table named silver_device_recordings. The source data contains 100 unique fields in a highly nested JSON structure.
The silver_device_recordings table will be used downstream for highly selective joins on a number of fields, and will also be leveraged by the machine learning team to filter on a handful of relevant fields, in total, 15 fields have been identified that will often be used for filter and join logic.
The data engineer is trying to determine the best approach for dealing with these nested fields before declaring the table schema.
Which of the following accurately presents information about Delta Lake and Databricks that may Impact their decision-making process?
Answer : D
Delta Lake, built on top of Parquet, enhances query performance through data skipping, which is based on the statistics collected for each file in a table. For tables with a large number of columns, Delta Lake by default collects and stores statistics only for the first 32 columns. These statistics include min/max values and null counts, which are used to optimize query execution by skipping irrelevant data files. When dealing with highly nested JSON structures, understanding this behavior is crucial for schema design, especially when determining which fields should be flattened or prioritized in the table structure to leverage data skipping efficiently for performance optimization. Reference: Databricks documentation on Delta Lake optimization techniques, including data skipping and statistics collection (https://docs.databricks.com/delta/optimizations/index.html).
A Data engineer wants to run unit's tests using common Python testing frameworks on python functions defined across several Databricks notebooks currently used in production.
How can the data engineer run unit tests against function that work with data in production?
Answer : A
The best practice for running unit tests on functions that interact with data is to use a dataset that closely mirrors the production data. This approach allows data engineers to validate the logic of their functions without the risk of affecting the actual production data. It's important to have a representative sample of production data to catch edge cases and ensure the functions will work correctly when used in a production environment.
Databricks Documentation on Testing: Testing and Validation of Data and Notebooks
Which is a key benefit of an end-to-end test?
Answer : A
End-to-end testing is a methodology used to test whether the flow of an application, from start to finish, behaves as expected. The key benefit of an end-to-end test is that it closely simulates real-world, user behavior, ensuring that the system as a whole operates correctly.
Software Testing: End-to-End Testing
A data engineer is testing a collection of mathematical functions, one of which calculates the area under a curve as described by another function.
Which kind of the test does the above line exemplify?
Answer : B
A unit test is designed to verify the correctness of a small, isolated piece of code, typically a single function. Testing a mathematical function that calculates the area under a curve is an example of a unit test because it is testing a specific, individual function to ensure it operates as expected.
Software Testing Fundamentals: Unit Testing
What is a method of installing a Python package scoped at the notebook level to all nodes in the currently active cluster?
Answer : C
Installing a Python package scoped at the notebook level to all nodes in the currently active cluster in Databricks can be achieved by using the Libraries tab in the cluster UI. This interface allows you to install libraries across all nodes in the cluster. While the %pip command in a notebook cell would only affect the driver node, using the cluster UI ensures that the package is installed on all nodes.
Databricks Documentation on Libraries: Libraries
A Databricks job has been configured with 3 tasks, each of which is a Databricks notebook. Task A does not depend on other tasks. Tasks B and C run in parallel, with each having a serial dependency on Task A.
If task A fails during a scheduled run, which statement describes the results of this run?
A data engineer is configuring a pipeline that will potentially see late-arriving, duplicate records.
In addition to de-duplicating records within the batch, which of the following approaches allows the data engineer to deduplicate data against previously processed records as it is inserted into a Delta table?
Answer : C
To deduplicate data against previously processed records as it is inserted into a Delta table, you can use the merge operation with an insert-only clause. This allows you to insert new records that do not match any existing records based on a unique key, while ignoring duplicate records that match existing records. For example, you can use the following syntax:
MERGE INTO target_table USING source_table ON target_table.unique_key = source_table.unique_key WHEN NOT MATCHED THEN INSERT *
This will insert only the records from the source table that have a unique key that is not present in the target table, and skip the records that have a matching key. This way, you can avoid inserting duplicate records into the Delta table.
https://docs.databricks.com/delta/delta-update.html#upsert-into-a-table-using-merge
https://docs.databricks.com/delta/delta-update.html#insert-only-merge