CDEP practice questions

14 free sample questions in the same style as the live exam. Answers and explanations are revealed as you go — nothing here is scored.

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1. Which schema design denormalizes dimension tables into a single flat table per dimension, contrasting with the snowflake schema?
Foundation
Data Modeling and Warehousing
2. In Data Vault modeling, what does a 'hub' table store?
Intermediate
Data Modeling and Warehousing
3. Which SCD type is most appropriate when you need to track both the current and one previous value of an attribute in the same row?
Advanced
Data Modeling and Warehousing
4. What is the role of a Kafka topic partition?
Foundation
Batch and Streaming Pipelines
5. What is 'micro-batching' in stream processing frameworks like Spark Structured Streaming?
Intermediate
Batch and Streaming Pipelines
6. A downstream consumer occasionally receives duplicate events from an upstream at-least-once delivery system. What is the most robust mitigation at the consumer?
Advanced
Batch and Streaming Pipelines
7. What is the role of the Spark driver program?
Foundation
Distributed Processing
8. Which technique helps mitigate data skew when joining on a highly skewed key?
Intermediate
Distributed Processing
9. What does 'partition evolution' in Apache Iceberg allow that traditional Hive-style partitioning does not?
Advanced
Storage and Table Formats
10. What is 'time travel' in the context of Delta Lake or Iceberg?
Intermediate
Storage and Table Formats
11. Why is idempotency especially important during pipeline backfills?
Foundation
Orchestration and Reliability
12. An organization wants to enforce that only authorized roles can view raw customer PII while still allowing broad access to aggregated analytics. Which combination of controls best achieves this?
Advanced
Data Quality, Governance, and Cost Management
13. CASE STUDY — Onion Creek Media's data lake has thousands of 20 KB Parquet files written by a streaming job, and queries are painfully slow. What is the most appropriate fix?
Intermediate
Storage and Table Formats
14. CASE STUDY — Matagorda Retail's nightly load sometimes runs twice after an operator retries a failed DAG, producing duplicated revenue figures. Which design principle prevents this?
Intermediate
Orchestration and Reliability

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CDEP practice questions

1. Which schema design denormalizes dimension tables into a single flat table per dimension, contrasting with the snowflake schema?

2. In Data Vault modeling, what does a 'hub' table store?

3. Which SCD type is most appropriate when you need to track both the current and one previous value of an attribute in the same row?

4. What is the role of a Kafka topic partition?

5. What is 'micro-batching' in stream processing frameworks like Spark Structured Streaming?

6. A downstream consumer occasionally receives duplicate events from an upstream at-least-once delivery system. What is the most robust mitigation at the consumer?

7. What is the role of the Spark driver program?

8. Which technique helps mitigate data skew when joining on a highly skewed key?

9. What does 'partition evolution' in Apache Iceberg allow that traditional Hive-style partitioning does not?

10. What is 'time travel' in the context of Delta Lake or Iceberg?

11. Why is idempotency especially important during pipeline backfills?

12. An organization wants to enforce that only authorized roles can view raw customer PII while still allowing broad access to aggregated analytics. Which combination of controls best achieves this?

13. CASE STUDY — Onion Creek Media's data lake has thousands of 20 KB Parquet files written by a streaming job, and queries are painfully slow. What is the most appropriate fix?

14. CASE STUDY — Matagorda Retail's nightly load sometimes runs twice after an operator retries a failed DAG, producing duplicated revenue figures. Which design principle prevents this?

Ready for the real thing?