Thoughts about the DP-600 exam for the new Microsoft Fabric certification

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In this post I share my thoughts about the DP-600 exam for the new Microsoft Fabric certification. Which will officially be known as the ‘Microsoft Certified: Fabric Analytics Engineer Associate‘ certification.

Just to recap, the DP-600 exam was announced this week during the Microsoft Ignite conference. Along with many other Microsoft Fabric announcements. Including the fact that Microsoft Fabric is now Generally Available (GA).

Personally, I am glad that details about an exam have been announced. Which is one of the reasons why I wanted to do this post. Along with the fact that a few months ago I shared my Microsoft Fabric certification thoughts.

Now it is official I want to share some insights along with plenty of links. Including some comparisons with the DP-500 exam.

Note that since this post was first published Microsoft have announced that they are going to retire the DP-500 exam on the exam page. It will be replaced by the DP-600 exam which focuses on Microsoft Fabric.

You can read more about the retirement announcement in the Microsoft post about in-demand news for in-demand skills.

Manage expectations about the DP-600 exam

To manage expectations, the beta exam is available in January 2024. Which gives you time to study for the exam. Fortunately, as you can see on the Microsoft Learn exam page a study guide is provided for the exam as well.

It is important to note that the beta version of the exam will initially be available. Which means that you might get more questions than the official exam. Which will be released at a later date.

In addition, I suspect you will have to wait a while before you get your results. Just like those of us who took the DP-500 beta exam had to do.

About the DP-600 exam for the new Microsoft Fabric certification

Going through all the details it looks like this exam is aimed towards one specific role within Microsoft Fabric. Instead of needing general knowledge about all of Microsoft Fabric. Which is the role of a Fabric Analytics Engineer.

When you read through the responsibilities for this role on the main DP-600 exam page it suggests that you only need knowledge of the Data Factory, Data Engineering, Data Warehouse and Power BI experiences.

However, it mentions that you work with data scientists in the next section of the exam page.

Finally, the role description states you need experience with other aspects of Microsoft Fabric as well. Including data modelling, Git-based source control and various languages.

Which implies to me that you only need knowledge about four of the experiences. Plus, a reasonable amount of knowledge about Microsoft Fabric administration and Microsoft Fabric Git integration.

Because I personally think that the exam page does not mention much about the Data Activator, Data Science and Real-time analytics experiences.

Overview of the skills measured

Even though the above statement is my personal opinion, the overview of skills measured below appears to imply the same.

• Plan, implement, and manage a solution for data analytics (10–15%)
• Prepare and serve data (40–45%)
• Implement and manage semantic models (20–25%)
• Explore and analyze data (20–25%)

In fact, when I go through the exam page I get the impression that the exam was initially based on the DP-500 exam and then had Microsoft Fabric elements added.

In fact, when you compare the two exams together the list of the other roles that you partner with are exactly the same.

Plus, as you can see below the overview of the skills measured for the DP-500 exam are very similar.

• Implement and manage a data analytics environment (25–30%)
• Query and transform data (20–25%)
• Implement and manage data models (25–30%)
• Explore and visualize data (20–25%)

DP-600 study guide for the new Microsoft Fabric certification

When you follow the link the study guide for the DP-600 exam you can see the differences more in the skills measured section.

It breaks things down clearer. However, in my opinion it only implies knowledge about the below Microsoft Fabric experiences.

• Data Factory
• Data Engineering
• Data Warehouse
• Power BI

Apart from some of the wordage about exploring data. Which could be interpreted as needing some knowledge about Data Wrangler.

Anyway, here is a quick overview of the different skills measured as part of the exam.

Plan, implement, and manage a solution for data analytics (10-15%)

In this section it makes it clear that you need knowledge about Microsoft Fabric administration. Plus, how to setup the Microsoft Fabric environment and manage Fabric capacities.

In addition, what the study guide calls the analytics development lifecycle. Basically, you must know about working with Power BI Projects, YAML pipeline deployments, deployment pipelines and Git integration.

Which I have covered in various posts. Including one about Power BI Project (PBIP) and Azure DevOps CI performance tests.

Prepare and serve data (40-45%)

This section is interesting. Because even though it draws parallels with the DP-500 exam it also has Microsoft Fabric specific elements in it.

For instance, it covers OneLake shortcuts. Plus, in addition to working with notebooks and pipelines like in a couple of the other exams it also specifies knowledge about dataflows.

In addition, it specifies that knowledge and transforming data and optimizing performance is required.

Implement and manage semantic models (20-25%)

At a glance, this does look similar to the ‘Implement and manage semantic models‘ skills measured for the DP-500 exam.

However, there are some subtle differences. Like knowledge about Direct Lake mode.

Explore and analyze data (20-25%)

To me this section is very interesting when you compare it to the DP-500 exam.

T-SQL currently appears to have a larger role. Because you must know how to work with T-SQL and Visual queries in both the read-only SQL analytics endpoint for Lakehouses and Data Warehouses.

In addition, there does appear to be less Power BI mentioned in this section as opposed to its DP-500 counterpart. Which I suspect is due to all the additional Microsoft Fabric elements.

DP-600 summary

To summarize, it does look like initially that there is focus on one specific Microsoft Fabric persona/role. Which could mean one of the below:

1. When the recommended training material is released, it will cover a lot more areas.
2. The exam will have additional elements for experiences and/or personas added over time.
3. Other role-based certifications relating to Microsoft Fabric exam will appear.

In reality, I suspect it will be the latter. Because it makes no sense to try and cram everything about Microsoft Fabric into one exam.

Plus, Kim Manis (l) has commented on LinkedIn that more certifications are in the works.

With this in mind, I am guessing that over time there will be more Microsoft Fabric exams for different roles/experiences.

Another interesting observation is that it does look like this exam was initially based on the DP-500 exam. Which I suspected in my previous post.

I must admit that I was surprised about the amount of focus on the analytics development lifecycle within this exam. Personally though, it is an area that I am interested in, so I am okay with it.

Those of you who are not so keen on this area are free to view my previous Microsoft Fabric posts to find out more about it.

Final words about the DP-600 exam for the new Microsoft Fabric certification

I hope this post about the DP-600 exam for the new Microsoft Fabric certification has got some of you as excited about it as I am.

With the advanced notice it gives everybody a chance to prepare for it before the beta exam is available in January.

Of course, if you have any comments or queries about this post feel free to reach out to me.