DP-600 Exam Update: Less is More or More is Less?

Exactly a year ago (November 2023), Microsoft announced a brand new exam: DP-600 (Implementing Analytics Solutions using Microsoft Fabric). The rest is history – DP-600 became the most popular Microsoft’s data-related exam ever, as more than 17.000 people obtained the certification until September this year (source: Microsoft’s keynote presentation at Fabric Conference Europe)!

I’ve taken the exam as soon as it went into beta (January 2024) and already shared my impressions and tips for passing the exam. Also, I have delivered numerous DP-600 trainings and workshops since then, including the one at the latest Fabric Conference Europe in Stockholm this September. Hence, I consider myself deeply involved in the topic:)…

The latest news is: beginning November 15th 2024, the DP-600 exam will be updated!

The purpose of this article is to examine the updates and provide you with additional insight about upcoming changes, as well as help you with the preparation to pass the exam or to successfully renew it (for those who already passed it based on the “old” curriculum).

Let’s first take a step back and remind ourselves about the “old” exam: that one was a “beast”! DAX, T-SQL, Python, M…Data ingestion, data transformation, data modeling, data exploration…Administering Fabric tenant, CI/CD…Semantic model optimization, DAX performance, external tools…Really?! Sounds like the only things missing from the DP-600 curriculum were: knowing how to snowboard, driving a car with your eyes closed, or preparing a traditional Japanese dish:)

On a serious note, 57 skills were measured in total!

I’ll repeat it here, because that was my main complaint (or concern, if you prefer) about the DP-600: you will hardly, if ever, find a single person proficient in DAX, SQL AND Python. I’m yet to meet someone who is strong in both Python and SQL. When you add DAX into mix, which is a “hell” on its own, you get a really challenging task in front of you. Honestly, if I’d ever interviewed someone for the position of Fabric Analytics Engineer (which is the official title you get by obtaining this certificate), I’d have never expected that this person knows how to do data transformation and/or data exploration in BOTH Python and SQL.

I’ll give you an analogy: If you are left-handed, you will likely use your left hand to write by default. Similarly, if you are strong with Python, you probably do all your data stuff with Python.

And, as I already wrote, I would prefer that there was an option to choose the “path” or “experience” for the DP-600 exam that plays to your strength (T-SQL vs Python), where you get specific questions on how to solve XYZ by using your tool of choice. However, a huge number of candidates passing the exam proved that it wasn’t “mission impossible” to reach 700 points (minimum for passing the exam), despite all of these challenges.

However, one huge topic was missing from the DP-600 exam: handling streaming data!

Before we dive into examining the updated curriculum, let’s take one step back and break down the sentence above. In my opinion, Analytics Engineer is just a glorified, fancy name for a traditional BI Developer/BI Engineer. Coincidentally, I know one:)…And, for years, before Fabric was even an idea in someone’s head (and even before all these other shiny cloud services), we were doing the same things using a different set of tools: data ingestion, data transformation, data modeling, querying the data, even using VB expressions in SSRS (yes, DAX was not a “thing” back then), or MDX for multidimensional models – if you look at the list of tasks and skills – we could be easily considered “ancient” analytics engineers:)

However, if you followed this list carefully, you might have noticed that one area was missing: handling streaming data! This is not a coincidence, because collecting streaming data was a super-rare case in the past. Maybe if you were a company in a specific area of business, or if you were a large company that could afford to handle streaming data…But, times changed, and now it’s “normal” for a company of almost any size to collect and analyze streaming data. Hence, if you are to work nowadays as an “analytics engineer”, you should definitely expect streaming data scenarios, and knowing how to deal with these scenarios is something that needs to be measured in the “analytics engineering” exam, which DP-600 proclaims to be…

So, if we agree that streaming data should be part of the DP-600, let’s imagine what this exam would look like then! If it was overwhelming with 57 skills measured, and with all these languages and skills mentioned above, try to add Eventstreams, Eventhouses, and KQL in the mix as well, and you’ll definitely need some strong pills to take this exam:)

Luckily, Microsoft “saved” us from going to a pharmacy:) How did they do this? By simply updating the exam curriculum.

So, what is changing in the DP-600?

The short answer is – A LOT of things! Let’s break it down into a few key bullet points:

• Streaming data is now part of the exam – this is the most significant change! Therefore, be ready to put your toes on Eventhouse and KQL in Fabric
• No more PySpark – this is also a huge one! Previously, you could have done most of the things with notebooks, and you were tested on ingesting, transforming, and querying the data with PySpark. This is now gone! Or, to be more precise, PySpark is now part of the brand-new DP-700 certificate (Fabric Data Engineer). If you want to learn more about this certification, I have you covered in this video
• Explore and Analyze Data is removed as a separate skill area, and it’s now part of the Prepare Data area
• Since Explore and Analyze Data previously “took” 25-30% of the exam questions, and it’s now incorporated into the Prepare Data skill, this percentage had to be somehow distributed across other skills. Hence, Maintain a data analytics solution skill (which is the renamed successor of the Plan, implement, and manage a solution for data analytics) now takes 25-30%, instead of 10-15% previously

Less is more, or more is less?

To conclude and try to answer the question from the title – is the updated version of the DP-600 more overwhelming than the old one or not? Well, it depends:)

If you look from a pure perspective of the number of skills measured – it’s now 3 main skill areas instead of 4, and 39 skills measured instead of 57! Also, there is no PySpark, no Admin Portal settings, no Shortcuts, etc. From this point of view, it looks like less…

On the other hand, there is a whole new skill area that includes streaming data (Eventhouse and KQL are specific skills in Fabric) and was previously not included in the exam. So, from that perspective, especially if you have never worked with streaming data, it looks like more…

However, in the final outcome, the DP-600 now seems a more balanced and realistic exam! I support Microsoft’s decision to include KQL in the scope, since handling streaming data is nowadays considered a regular part of designing and implementing analytics solutions. On the other hand, it’s also encouraging that we now have a clear (or almost clear) separation of specific tasks and skills measured between analytics engineers and data engineers (DP-600 vs. DP-700) – although a lot of tasks of these two roles will overlap in real life, these two now have individual learning paths and certifications. Breaking things down into smaller chunks is always a sound engineering approach:))

Learning resources

Let’s wrap up by listing learning resources for the updated DP-600 exam.

I’ll shamelessly start with my own dedicated page, where I’ll try to cover as many DP-600 topics as possible. I’m also doing similar in the video form on the Data Mozart YouTube channel. I’m also doing a lot of live DP-600 trainings on various platforms. If you are interested in finding out more details, or possibly joining one of the groups, feel free to reach out.

You should also check Will Needham’s wonderful YouTube channel (Learn Microsoft Fabric). Will did an amazing job in covering all the relevant topics for the DP-600.

My fellow MVPs, Andy Cutler, and Kevin Chant, also blogged a lot about the DP-600, so make sure to take a look at their resources as well.

Last, but definitely not least, the official Microsoft Learn Study Guide provides a list of resources to get ready for the exam.

As always, feel free to share your thoughts in the comments.

Thanks for reading and good luck with your exam!

Last Updated on October 29, 2024 by Nikola

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