What to Expect from the DP-700 Microsoft Certification Exam

About two weeks ago, the DP-700 (Microsoft Fabric Data Engineer) went into beta. This means that curious people like me can take the exam, see what’s in it and provide feedback to the people who wrote the questions.

To add to fun, I decided to take the exam online as the exam centres close by didn’t have any capacity left for the rest of this calendar year. It seems that taking exams is growing in popularity.

Online experience

It was my first time trying to take an exam online which presented me with some challenges. Finding a quiet room in my house that matches the requirements, killing processes on my laptop that might interfere and making sure there’s a stable internet connection.

I ended up in my sons bedroom as he has the least tech there (excluding Lego Technic). There’s a desk and enough room for my laptop. I pulled a new ethernet cable from a switch to his room (temporary) and connected everything.

First thing that went wrong was the power adapter for my laptop, it stopped working and I had to find a replacement. That fixed, the test software from PearsonVue kept checking things but got stuck on my USB hub. It only functions as a hub for USB, HDMI and ethernet but insisted that it has data capabilities as well. Even though it doesn’t show up as a device. Removing it and relying on my WiFi was the solution.

The proctor was very nice and calm and helped me fix the final issues as I was sitting to close to a number of children books and Donald Duck pockets. Can’t blame him. After being set, I could start the exam, only to encounter a white screen of failure after the eighth question. The proctor in the chat restarted my session from where I was kicked out and I could continue without further issues.

One thing to note is that I had the house to myself. Other people in your house might inadvertently disturb you and then your exam is over. Make sure it’s quiet and you don’t get disturbed.

Exam itself

As always, I can’t reveal too much of the exam as there’s an NDA. But when you look at the study guide, it shows you this:

Skills at a glance

• Implement and manage an analytics solution (30–35%)
• Ingest and transform data (30–35%)
• Monitor and optimize an analytics solution (30–35%)

In my specific set of questions, I got a lot of questions on real time data; both ingestion and analytics. An area I’m less well versed in compared to the regular data ingestion, processing and analytics. I think I did miss a few questions there.

In general, the questions on managing and implementing an analytics solution are hard. I had to read the questions a few times to get a good grasp of what the best fitting answer should be. Sometimes there were multiple fitting answers, depending on the way you look at the question. It really forces you to think and eliminate wrong answers. It also shows how Microsoft thinks you should build a data solution in Microsoft Fabric, something that I think will also show in the Learn path when that becomes available.

Monitoring and optimising is another large part of the exam and they can ask hard questions. Again you need to think, eliminate and find the best fitting answer.

For the ingestion and transformation of data, I was happy to see a little more challenging questions compared to the DP-600 exam. You don’t need to be a top level expert on all the possible languages but some proficiency does really help.

Recommended?

If you’ve passed the DP-600 exam, the DP-700 will add some depth to it; it’s more focused on the engineering of your solution where the DP-600 is more on the analytics side of things. There is overlap between the two and it feels like the DP-700 will be the alternative of the DP-203 where the DP-600 is that for the DP-500.

If you, like me, are mostly focused on the engineering side of things, the DP-700 is the way to go. But if you, also like me, are also administering the Fabric environment and need to be able to have a meaningful conversation with data analysts, taking the DP-600 will help you understand them better.

And no, there’s no substitution for real world experience and taking these exams won’t make you an expert. But it will help you in becoming one.

Do you want to learn more, click here to join Valerie and my on our journey into the certification with blogs and videos!