DP-700 cheat sheet

A one-page reference for the Microsoft Fabric Data Engineer Associate exam: the format, how the domains are weighted, and the glossary terms for this exam.

Exam at a glance

Vendor
Microsoft
Level
Associate
Questions
60
Time
100 min
Mock pass mark
70%
Domains
3
Practice Qs
144
Code
DP-700

Domain weightings

How much of the exam each domain covers. Spend your study time in proportion — the heavier the domain, the more questions you'll see.

Key terms

Microsoft Fabric
Microsoft Fabric is an end-to-end analytics platform that unifies data engineering, warehousing, and real-time intelligence on OneLake. DP-700 centers on building data-engineering solutions in Fabric.
OneLake
OneLake is the single, unified data lake built into Microsoft Fabric that stores all analytics data. DP-700 covers OneLake settings, shortcuts, and security.
Lakehouse
A lakehouse is a Fabric store that combines a data lake with structured querying over Delta tables. DP-700 covers optimizing lakehouse tables and loading patterns.
Delta table
A Delta table is a Parquet-based table format with ACID transactions used across Fabric lakehouses. DP-700 covers optimizing Delta/lakehouse tables for performance.
PySpark
PySpark is the Python API for Apache Spark, used in Fabric notebooks to transform large datasets. DP-700 requires transforming data with PySpark, SQL, and KQL.
Notebook
A notebook is a Fabric authoring surface for running Spark code (PySpark, SQL) for data engineering. DP-700 covers choosing between Dataflow Gen2, pipelines, and notebooks and resolving notebook errors.
Dataflow Gen2
Dataflow Gen2 is a Fabric low-code data-transformation tool built on Power Query. DP-700 covers choosing it versus notebooks or pipelines and resolving Dataflow Gen2 errors.
Pipeline
A Fabric data pipeline orchestrates activities such as copy, notebook, and dataflow runs. DP-700 covers ingesting data with pipelines, orchestration patterns, and resolving pipeline errors.
Eventstream
An Eventstream is a Fabric Real-Time Intelligence feature that captures and routes streaming events with no code. DP-700 covers processing streaming data with Eventstreams.
Eventhouse
An Eventhouse is a Fabric store optimized for real-time and time-series data queried with KQL. DP-700 covers optimizing and resolving errors in Eventhouses.
KQL
KQL (Kusto Query Language) is the query language for Fabric Real-Time Intelligence and Eventhouses. DP-700 requires transforming and processing data with KQL, including windowing functions.
Spark structured streaming
Spark structured streaming is a Spark engine for scalable, fault-tolerant stream processing in Fabric notebooks. DP-700 covers processing streaming data with it.
Mirroring
Mirroring in Fabric continuously replicates an external database into OneLake for analytics without building pipelines. DP-700 covers implementing mirroring for batch ingestion.
Shortcut
A OneLake shortcut is a reference that surfaces data from another location in a Fabric item without copying it. DP-700 covers creating and managing OneLake shortcuts and resolving shortcut errors.