Databricks Data Engineer Professional Question 143
Single answerA data engineering team is using Delta Lake to manage their data lake. They want to use Delta Lake cloning to create copies of existing Delta tables for testing and backup purposes. They have the following requirements:
- The cloned tables should not duplicate the storage of the original tables to save on storage costs.
- When testing with the cloned tables, changes made to the cloned tables should not affect the original tables.
Which type of cloning should the team use to meet these requirements?
- A
Shallow Clone
- B
Deep Clone
- C
Delta Table Snapshot
- D
Materialized View
Show answer and explanation
Correct answer: A
Explanation
Shallow Clone is designed to create a lightweight copy of a Delta table by referencing the original table's metadata and files. This approach avoids duplicating storage while ensuring that changes to the clone are independent of the original table, making it suitable for scenarios like testing or analysis without impacting the source data.
- A. Correct.
Shallow Clone is the correct choice because it creates a reference to the original Delta table's files without duplicating the storage. Any changes to the shallow clone do not affect the original table, meeting both requirements.
- B. Incorrect.
Deep Clone creates a full, independent copy of the data and metadata, which duplicates storage and does not meet the requirement to save on storage costs.
- C. Incorrect.
Delta Table Snapshot is not a feature of Delta Lake cloning. It is unrelated to the cloning process described in the scenario.
- D. Incorrect.
Materialized View is a feature for creating precomputed views of data but is not applicable to Delta Lake cloning, as it does not create a standalone copy of the data.