Resources to prepare for the Exam DP-500: Designing and Implementing Enterprise-Scale Analytics Solutions Using Microsoft Azure and Microsoft Power BI

Posted September 18, 2022

In Blog, Microsoft Certification, Power BI

I have been preparing for several weeks to take the DP-500 exam and thought I would like to share with you the resources I am using.

This is the second exam that includes Power BI and in this article you will find the comparison between it and the PL-300 Exam, the skills required, study resources and the benefits of obtaining the certification.

The Exam DP-500 was released on April 19, 2022 and is the second one that includes Power BI, the main difference with the PL-300 exam is that it focuses on self-service BI while DP-500 is the enterprise data analyst certification.

Role Comparison between PL-300 and DP-500 certifications

PL-300 Power BI Data Analyst

DP-500 Azure Enterprise Data Analyst

This exam is focused on self-service Power BI, so it is more accessible than the DP-500.
It is part of the Microsoft Power Platform “PL” family of certifications , so it starts with “PL” and not “DP”.
It includes the following advanced self-service Power BI skills:
- Data cleaning and transformation.
- Data model design and construction
- Report and dashboard building
- Deploy and maintain assets
- Advanced use of Power Query (M).
- Writing expressions by using DAX.
- Delivering actionable insights by leveraging available data and applying domain expertise.
- Collaboration with key stakeholders across verticals to identify business requirements.

It is focused on performing advanced data analytics at enterprise scale, so in addition to the topics covered in the PL-300 exam it includes:
- Designing and building enterprise tabular data models.
- Managing data repositories, data processing in the cloud and on-premises
- Data governance and configuration settings for Power BI administration.
- Optimize performance of the data analytics solutions.
- Microsoft Purview.
- Integrating with IT infrastructure
- Applying development lifecycle practices.
- Consuming data from Azure Synapse Analytics.
- Advanced Azure enterprise skills.
- Querying relational databases and analyzing data by using Transact-SQL (T-SQL).

Benefits of obtaining the certification

Preparing for a certification gives you the opportunity to study in an orderly way, reinforce your knowledge and validate those aspects you need to deepen. After obtaining my certifications, I have felt a strong sense of accomplishment, more confidence and it has opened new doors in my career.

I know that getting certified requires an investment of time, effort and money, but I assure you it will be well worth it. These are some of the benefits of getting certified, I hope these will motivate you to invest time and effort in getting it:

Demonstrate your knowledge and skills.
Grow professionally.
New professional oportunities.
Boost your confidence.
Increase you salary.
If you work as a freelancer you improve your chances of finding new clients.
Be more influential in your work projects.

Here are some statistics provided by Microsoft on the career impact of certified IT professionals:

kills measured

This exam contains the following 4 sections:

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%)

Functional Group	Main Task
1. Implement and administer an analytics platform	1.1. Govern and administer a data analytics environment 1.2. Integrate an analytics platform into an existing IT infrastructure 1.3. Manage the analytics development lifecycle
2. Prepare and ingest data	2.1. Prepare Data 2.2. Ingest and transform data
3. Create and optimize data models	3.1. Design and build tabular models 3.2. Optimize enterprise-scale data models
4. Visualize and explore data	4.1. Explore data by using Azure Synapse Analytics and Power BI

In the following link: Exam DP-500 Skills Measured you can find a downloadable document that contains the complete list of skills tested on the exam. I recommend that you check it from time to time because it has updates.

Microsoft Resources: Here you will find the resources provided by Microsoft for exam preparation.

Microsoft Power BI data analyst (PL-300 Exam): This is the learning path to prepare for the PL-300 exam, however, it covers some of the topics included in the DP-500 exam.
DP-500 Microsoft learning Path: These resources were recently added to Microsoft DP-500 web page, you will see them If you scroll down to the end of the page:
Master the basics of Azure: data fundamentals
Level up: Azure enterprise data analyst collection on Learn.

Other Resources:

– Nikola Ilic

– Serverless SQL