An outline of my thoughts on the Azure Data Engineer certificate, Microsoft learn as a study resource, and the exam itself.

Recently I’ve been getting more interested in the potential of cloud services for data processing and machine learning. Previously I had worked with on-premises High Performance Computing (HPC) infrastructure fairly extensively because it was a service I had access to during my PhD and my job. But not everyone has access to on-premesis HPC hardware which is where cloud computing becomes an attractive option. Cloud computing is also attractive for many other reasons such as the ability to scale up or down based on need, the integration of storage, compute, data ingestion/analysis methods and app deployment platforms. While I had done some targetted Google Cloud Platform (GCP) work in the past, I must admit that cloud services in general were something I had overlooked, but not anymore.

At the begining of 2023, I decided to dive into cloud technologies by gaining the Microsoft Azure Data Engineer Associate Certification (DP-203). I started by following the learning pathway on Microsoft Learn which claims to take just over 40 hours of dedicated study which I found to a fairly accurate estimate if you do all the exercises. I did find the pathway quite repetitive in some sections and other sections felt like a list of facts to memorise (what connectors does this service support etc.). The content definitely didn’t need to be as long as it was but the repetition did help with retention. That said, going straight from the learning pathway to the exam would probably result in a failure if you don’t have prior Azure experience / learning. I spent some time going over the official practise test which gave a much better idea of the kinds of questions that would actually be on the exam. Running through the practise test you can see trends in the topics emerge and then go back and study those sections in greater detail often referring directly to the Azure documentation. Using the Microsoft learn pathway and the practise test I ended up achieving over 900 (out of 1000) on the actual exam.

Overall I am glad I finally dived into cloud technologies a bit more broadly then my previous GCP experience, the range of services and their integration within Azure makes this an extremely powerful platform. While the Microsoft learn pathway covered most of the content for the exam it was tedious in sections, sometimes repetitive, and alone likely won’t give you the knowledge you need to pass the exam. I do, however, think this is a good thing though, any project of real importance or scale will need to you consult the Azure documentation on your own. The ability to read the documentation is a fundamental skill in any tech position. Having finished and looking back I would reccomend the certificate to anyone wanting to upskill in the area of data engineering and cloud technologies.