DP-700 study plan

Your step-by-step plan

1. Map the blueprint and book a date

   Day 1

   Read the official DP-700 skills outline and the three domains with their weights. Book a provisional date now, because a fixed date turns open-ended study into a plan and is the strongest predictor of actually sitting. Note the three domains carry near-equal weight, so plan to clear all three rather than betting on one, and account for the security and orchestration depth packed into the implement-and-manage domain.

2. Build the Fabric foundations hands-on

   Week 1

   Stand up a workspace, a Lakehouse, and a Warehouse, and load data into both. Configure the Spark starter pool and a custom pool and feel the cold-start difference. Create a Data Factory pipeline that runs a notebook, and pass a pipeline parameter into the notebook through a tagged parameters cell and base parameters. This first week is about getting the muscle memory the scenario questions assume.

3. Go deep on ingest and transform

   Weeks 2 to 3

   This is the engineering heart, so it gets heavy time. Implement a high-water-mark incremental load against an append-only source and contrast it with truncate-and-reload. Build a conformed dimension with surrogate keys shared by two facts, and practise SCD handling. Drill the store boundaries until they are automatic, Lakehouse versus Warehouse versus Eventhouse, and the read-only SQL analytics endpoint. Handle duplicate, missing, and late-arriving data, and use a OneLake shortcut versus a copy or mirror correctly.

4. Master security and orchestration

   Week 4

   Build the security control matrix until object-level versus row-level versus column-level security versus dynamic data masking is automatic, and practise securing the same Lakehouse across both direct file reads and the SQL analytics endpoint with independent controls. Configure OneLake data access roles, sensitivity labels, and item endorsement. Drill the orchestration choice between a Dataflow Gen2, a pipeline, and a notebook, and wire schedules and event-based triggers.

5. Drill monitoring and optimisation

   Week 5

   Learn where each diagnostic signal lives: the Monitoring hub for cross-item runs, the run detail for a failed activity's error and rows-read count, and the executor stderr log plus Spark UI metrics for a lost executor. Map each optimisation lever to its bottleneck, Spark pool autoscale for peaky load, V-Order and file compaction for small files and read speed, and partitioning for filtered queries. Practise turning a symptom into the single most direct artefact or lever.

6. Drill weak domains, then space the review

   Week 6

   Use your per-domain accuracy to attack the domains dragging you down rather than re-reading what you already know. Then space it: revisit each domain's recall prompts after a few days and again a week later. Spacing roughly doubles what sticks compared with cramming the night before, and the store-and-engine judgement calls need repetition to become reflex.

7. Sit a timed mock and calibrate

   Weeks 6 to 7

   Take at least one full timed mock under exam conditions to rehearse pacing and the flag-and-return habit. Treat the score as a per-domain readiness signal, not a single number, and review every missed question, naming the exact workload fit or documented rule you misread, before you book or sit.

Frequently asked questions