I recently took and passed my first Fabric certification exam, the DP-700 Fabric Data Engineer Associate. I know, I know, it’s a little backwards, most folks take the DP-600 first.
It’s no secret that this exam is challenging. The breadth of the exam covers ALOT of topics: KQL, Eventstreams, Eventhouses, pipelines, PySpark, T-SQL, Apache Spark, Notebook, monitoring, Lakehouses, Warehouses, and on, and on. What I found the most challenging, though, was the fine details that some of the questions required. Stuff that typically becomes muscle memory in the real world. Here’s some tips and tricks from my my experience taking this exam:
Tips & Tricks
Get Hands On with Fabric
Nothing will prepare you better than getting hands on. You don’t necessarily need to roll out complex, full-fledged, enterprise solutions. But write some notebooks both in PySpark and Spark SQL. Build a couple data pipelines. Schedule them. Make some stuff break so you can get familiar with the error messages. Review the Fabric Capacity Metrics App. If you can access a tenant where you can see the Fabric admin panel, spend time there.
There are enough sample datasets available right within the Fabric environment that you’re able to build something in every workload.
Some of the questions on my exam were about knowing were settings or error messages are in the platform. I found my hands on experience a better preparer for these questions over book learning.
Form or Join a Study Group
I had the opportunity to join a study group with a couple colleagues and friends to prepare. We met twice a week and worked through the Microsoft Learn DP-700 Practice Exam and the Certicace DP-700 Practice Exam. Between questions we stopped to discuss what one of us didn’t know, why we got an answer right or wrong, and gave ourselves the opportunity to learn from each other. Now reflecting on that time, I learned more from these conversations than I realized! During the exam, I referred back to these conversations many times while reasoning through the questions. I cannot encourage enough gathering with the community to prepare. Not only do you sharpen each other, you build each other in encouragement, can celebrate together, and ultimately have a trusted colleague to work alongside in your Fabric journey.
Utilize Microsoft Learn
Spend time reviewing the DP-700T00-A: Microsoft Fabric Data Engineer course. This is a great starting point. These modules give a good base to get hands on and learn the concepts. I did not find the Learn modules as in depth as the exam, however, so I recommend supplemental material in addition.
YouTube Content
Will Needham’s DP-700 Exam Full Course (6 hours) | Microsoft Fabric Data Engineer content and Aleksi Partenen’s DP-700 Exam Prep content fill the need for supplemental material well. I found each video series thorough. Will and Aleksi both covered all of topics found in the exam, but I found that each of their unique perspectives, and the hands-on experience they each shared, to be what helped to drive points home. The videos are all well done and can be broken down into manageable pieces. I have both of these series saved for quick reference as my Fabric journey progresses!
Will and Aleksi are not the folks producing content. I have heard great stuff about the Microsoft Reactor series (not YouTube but still video) and Shabnam Watson’s content also. Lean in to your community to find what has helped them. A few takes on the same topic provide great value.
Get Organized and Set an Exam Strategy
The DP-700 is not an exam to simply waltz through. As I mentioned above, the exam content wasn’t just about memorizing “the book”, but also testing to see if you really grasp the platform and it’s components. Give yourself ample time to prepare. I took about 6 weeks, but another 2 weeks probably would have been better. Don’t cram; prepare in chunks to let the material settle in. Take the practice exams and read over the documentation for areas where you don’t get the correct answers. Keep taking the practice exams until you’re consistently scoring over 80%.
If you elect to take the exam online, give yourself a couple of hours to setup the software, run a system test, and prepare the physical space where you will test. Don’t assume that everything will just work as expected. I almost fell into that trap and would have missed my exam had I not prepared the night before.
Once exam day arrives, enter the exam with a strategy. My strategy for this exam was to be sure that I answered every question. I aimed to initially spend 1 minute or less on each question. I allowed myself time to think and reason but not time to overthink. If I didn’t feel confident in the answer, I marked the question for review and moved on. At the end of the exam, I reviewed the questions I had marked for review, consulted the Microsoft Learn tab and spent enough time with each question to feel more confident. I also allowed around 30 minutes of exam time for the case study, which proved about right. This amount left plenty of time to read the requirements completely, reason through each of the ten questions, but then review the requirements as needed during each question to ensure that I selected the correct answer. My strategy may not work for you, and that’s ok. A winning coach wouldn’t walk into a title game without a game plan. Give yourself enough of a game plan to complete the exam in full. You’ll be glad you did.
Final Thoughts
I never set out to become a data engineer, but I am so glad that I took and passed this exam. No matter the career path before me, I trust that what I learned in the process is going to bear good fruit. In the short term, I have a greater understanding of the data platform that my company is using and believe I’m well equipped to keep growing with Fabric and Power BI!
What exam prep do you recommend? Any exam strategies to share?
