Data-Engineer-Associate domain - 16% of the exam

Working with Lakeflow Jobs

Working with Lakeflow Jobs is 16% of the Databricks Certified Data Engineer Associate exam. These are the objectives it covers, each with practice questions, with every answer explained.

Objectives in this domain

Sample question from this domain

Free sampleWorking with Lakeflow Jobshard

A Lakeflow Job graph contains an If/else condition task named check_volume. Two tasks hang off it: load_full depends on the true outcome and load_incremental depends on the false outcome. A fourth task named publish depends on load_full alone, with its Run if condition left at the default. On tonight's run the condition evaluates to false and load_incremental completes successfully. What is the state of load_full, publish and the run as a whole?

  • Aload_full is skipped, publish is marked failed because a dependency did not succeed, and the run is reported as failed even though load_incremental finished.
  • Bload_full is skipped, publish is skipped because its only dependency did not succeed, and the run is reported as successful because no task failed. Correct
  • Cload_full is marked failed because the condition ruled it out, publish is skipped, and the run is reported as failed because a task on the untaken branch carries a failure state.
  • Dload_full is skipped, publish still runs because a skipped dependency counts as a success under the default Run if condition, and the run is reported as successful.
An untaken condition branch is skipped, that skip propagates to dependants under the default Run if condition, and skips do not fail the run. The If/else condition task resolves to exactly one outcome and the tasks wired to the other outcome are skipped. Skipping is a terminal state distinct from failure, so it propagates down the dependency chain under the default Run if condition of All succeeded while leaving the overall run result successful.

Why A is wrong: It is tempting because the default Run if condition does block publish, but a dependency that was skipped produces a skipped task rather than a failed one, and a skipped task does not fail the run.

Why B is correct: The false outcome skips the true branch, the default Run if condition of All succeeded propagates that skip to publish, and a run made up of successful and skipped tasks is reported as successful.

Why C is wrong: This mistakes the untaken branch for an error. A condition task selects a branch, so the branch that was not selected is skipped, and a skipped task is not a failure state.

Why D is wrong: The outcome for the run is right but the mechanism is wrong: All succeeded requires the dependency to have actually succeeded, so a skipped dependency skips publish rather than releasing it.

Other domains in this exam

See also the Data-Engineer-Associate cert hub, the study guide, and the cheat sheet.

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