DP-500 case studies

DP-500 · Put your knowledge to work in context.

DP-500, now titled Microsoft Certified: Power BI Data Analyst Associate (historically Azure Enterprise Data Analyst Associate), is a certification for analysts and BI developers who build and govern analytics at organizational scale rather than single-report authors. It targets people comfortable with Power BI Desktop, DAX, and either T-SQL or a lakehouse/warehouse engine, who now need to design shared semantic models, secure and govern data, and tune performance. The DP-500 case studies are 5 cases and about 4,185 words.

Meridian Outdoor: Choosing Compute for a 3 TB Mart with a Five-Minute Hot Path

Meridian Outdoor runs SQL Server 2019 and an SSAS tabular model for 180 analysts. The sales fact table is 3.1 TB and grows about 18% a year; the nightly load currently takes 5 hours 40 minutes and must complete before a 06:00 business cut-off.

869 words, about 4 min 2

Coho Health: Classifying PHI, Enforcing Partner RLS, and Keeping EU Data in the EU

Coho Health Administrators processes claims for 3.2 million members across the US, Canada and the EU. Power BI datasets contain member IDs, claim amounts and diagnosis codes classified as PHI.

845 words, about 4 min 3

Lakeshore University: Fixing a Fan Trap and Making 900 Million Rows Fast

Lakeshore University's advancement office has a Power BI semantic model over a Synapse dedicated SQL pool. FactGift holds 900 million gift transactions and FactEventAttendance 120 million rows.

830 words, about 4 min 4

Fabrikam Manufacturing: Capacity Saturation, Release Discipline, and a Failing 14 GB Refresh

Fabrikam Manufacturing runs a Power BI Premium P1 capacity in North Europe supporting 380 workspaces, 1,100 reports and 1.4 million report views a month. The finance dataset is 14 GB in import mode and is scheduled to refresh six times a day; it fails about twice a week with a timeout.

795 words, about 4 min 5

Tailwind Traders: A DirectQuery Report at 130% Capacity

Tailwind Traders runs a Power BI Premium P1 capacity and a Synapse dedicated SQL pool at DWU1000c. The Sales Performance dataset uses DirectQuery and pages carry up to 40 visuals; average page load is 22 seconds and the 95th percentile is 70 seconds.

846 words, about 4 min