Studying for Fabric certifications during the age of AI

[KevinChant]

In this post I want to cover studying for Fabric certifications during the age of AI. In order to highlight some AI-related aspects to others.

Currently, there are two Microsoft Fabric exams you can take:

• DP-600 exam to gain the Fabric Analytics Engineer Associate certification. Which focuses a lot on semantic models and requires some knowledge about other Fabric workloads as well. Including Data Engineering, Data Warehouses and Real-Time Intelligence.
• DP-700 exam to gain the Fabric Data Engineer Associate certification. Which focuses on the core Data Engineering skills required to work with Microsoft Fabric.

Some of the more popular options to prepare for these exams include:

• Going through the recommended Microsoft Learn material for the exam. For example, the DP-700T00-A Microsoft Fabric Data Engineer course for the DP-700 exam.
• Using a search engine to find out more about all items mentioned in a study guide.
• Following the recommended steps covered in the Fabric Career Hub page.
• Sessions and workshops during conferences and user group meetups.
• Third-party blog posts and videos.
• Study books.

In reality, how you study for these exams can vary. Due to personal preferences and how your brain reacts to different types of studying.

For instance some study better visually which is why videos are a better option for them. Others prefer hands-on. Which is why they can benefit more from attending workshops which offer hands-on experience.

Another benefit from attending both sessions and workshops is the fact that people get to ask questions. Which is a time-honored tradition and a great help.

Studying for Fabric certifications during the age of AI

Now that we are in the age of AI we can take this one step further. For instance, we can now ask questions directly whilst going through the Microsoft Learn documentation.Ask Learn functionality

You can do a lot with this functionality. One basic example is that you can get an overview of various pages. 

However, you can also test your prompt engineering skills to do more with the Ask Learn functionality. For example, when on the DP-600 study guide page you can ask it the below to generate a six-week study guide:

"Can you break down the skills measured into six parts so that I can study for them over six weeks? Based on the contents of the "Maintain a data analytics solution", "Prepare data" and "Implement and manage semantic models" sections."

Doing this will provide an initial six-week training plan for you based on the contents of the page. However, be aware that it may need to be adjusted.

Another option is to work with offerings like Copilot in Edge to find out more information about something.

For example, you can copy and paste each topic mentioned in the study guide into Copilot in Edge to find out more. Which can provide you detailed answers. Along with links to essential resources.

However, be aware that the results may not be accurate. Plus, there are existing resources that can provide some essential listings. Like the DP-700 skills measured resources provided by Andy Cutler (l).

Final thing I want to mention relates to MCP servers. Because those of you experimenting with MCP servers may be interested to know that there is now a Microsoft Learn Docs MCP Server.

I performed some initial tests on the Microsoft Learn Docs MCP Server and I can vouch for the fact that it is good.

For example, I configured the MCP server in Visual Studio Code. I then asked what are the differences between the DP-600 and the DP-700 Microsoft Fabric exams according to the Microsoft Learn documentation. Which returned the below results.Differences betweeen DP-600 and DP-700 exams

I then took it a step further and asked GitHub Copilot chat to create a comparison table that showed all the same skills measured for both the DP-600 and DP-700 Microsoft Fabric exams based on their study guides. I got the below results. 

Comparison table between the DP-600 and the DP-700 exams

As you can see, this can be a good way to get updated details directly from Microsoft Learn. Plus, allows you the flexibility to combine this with other MCP servers directly in Visual Studio Code.

Final words

I hope this post about studying for Fabric certifications in the age of AI has given you food for though.

Because in the age of AI there are now more study aids to help you. Even going as far as coming up with study plans and potentially certification paths.

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