Databricks-Certified-Professional-Data-Engineer Exam Dumps : Databricks Certified Data Engineer Professional Exam

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match is found and there's a change in the address, the existing record in the customers table is updated to mark it as no longer current (current = false), and an end date is assigned (end_date = staged_updates.effective_date).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.

Partitioning a Delta Lake table is a strategy used to improve query performance by dividing the table into distinct segments based on the values of a specific column. This approach allows queries to scan only the relevant partitions, thereby reducing the amount of data read and enhancing performance.

Considerations for Choosing a Partition Column:

Cardinality: Columns with high cardinality (i.e., a large number of unique values) are generally poor choices for partitioning. High cardinality can lead to a large number of small partitions, which can degrade performance.

Query Patterns: The partition column should align with common query filters. If queries frequently filter data based on a particular column, partitioning by that column can be beneficial.

Partition Size: Each partition should ideally contain at least 1 GB of data. This ensures that partitions are neither too small (leading to too many partitions) nor too large (negating the benefits of partitioning).

Evaluation of Columns:

date:

Cardinality: Typically low, especially if data spans over days, months, or years.

Query Patterns: Many analytical queries filter data based on date ranges.

Partition Size: Likely to meet the 1 GB threshold per partition, depending on data volume.

user_id:

Cardinality: High, as each user has a unique ID.

Query Patterns: While some queries might filter by user_id, the high cardinality makes it unsuitable for partitioning.

Partition Size: Partitions could be too small, leading to inefficiencies.

post_id:

Cardinality: Extremely high, with each post having a unique ID.

Query Patterns: Unlikely to be used for filtering large datasets.

Partition Size: Each partition would be very small, resulting in a large number of partitions.

post_time:

Cardinality: High, especially if it includes exact timestamps.

Query Patterns: Queries might filter by time, but the high cardinality poses challenges.

Partition Size: Similar to user_id, partitions could be too small.

Conclusion:

Given the considerations, the date column is the most suitable candidate for partitioning. It has low cardinality, aligns with common query patterns, and is likely to result in appropriately sized partitions.

When joining a stream of advertisement impressions with a stream of user clicks, you want to minimize the state that you need to maintain for the join. Option A suggests using a left outer join with the condition that clickTime == impressionTime, which is suitable for correlating events that occur at the exact same time. However, in a real-world scenario, you would likely need some leeway to account for the delay between an impression and a possible click. It's important to design the join condition and the window of time considered to optimize performance while still capturing the relevant user interactions. In this case, having the watermark can help with state management and avoid state growing unbounded by discarding old state data that's unlikely to match with new data.