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

This is the second exam that includes Power BI, it was released on April 19, 2022, 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.

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. 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.

Role Comparison between PL-300 and DP-500 certifications

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:

Skills 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%)

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:

• Introduction to data analytics on Azure
• Govern data across an enterprise
• Model, query, and explore data in Azure Synapse
• Prepare data for tabular models in Power BI
• Design and build tabular models
• Implement advanced data visualization techniques by using Power BI

Master the basics of Azure: data fundamentals

Level up: Azure enterprise data analyst collection on Learn.

 Other Resources:

• Nikola Ilic: On his Data Mozart blog there are excellent learning resources covering most of the exam topics.
• Serverless SQL: It includes a list of blogs covering the exam topics and is updated as new blogs become available.