Databricks Certified Data Engineer Professional — Question 196

To reduce storage and compute costs, the data engineering team has been tasked with curating a series of aggregate tables leveraged by business intelligence dashboards, customer-facing applications, production machine learning models, and ad hoc analytical queries.

The data engineering team has been made aware of new requirements from a customer-facing application, which is the only downstream workload they manage entirely. As a result, an aggregate table used by numerous teams across the organization will need to have a number of fields renamed, and additional fields will also be added.

Which of the solutions addresses the situation while minimally interrupting other teams in the organization without increasing the number of tables that need to be managed?

Answer options

• A. Send all users notice that the schema for the table will be changing; include in the communication the logic necessary to revert the new table schema to match historic queries.
• B. Configure a new table with all the requisite fields and new names and use this as the source for the customer-facing application; create a view that maintains the original data schema and table name by aliasing select fields from the new table.
• C. Create a new table with the required schema and new fields and use Delta Lake's deep clone functionality to sync up changes committed to one table to the corresponding table.
• D. Replace the current table definition with a logical view defined with the query logic currently writing the aggregate table; create a new table to power the customer-facing application.

Correct answer: B

Explanation

Option B is the best solution as it allows the new fields and renamed fields to be integrated while maintaining the original schema for other teams through a view, thus minimizing disruption. Option A fails to provide a practical solution for managing changes without interruption. Option C introduces complexity with additional table management. Option D also creates a new table, which contradicts the requirement to avoid increasing the number of tables.