Databricks Data Engineer Associate · Free practice question 1 of 12
Delta shallow vs deep clone
Before testing a risky schema change, an engineer at Tessaly Books wants a copy of the Delta table books.silver.orders that is created almost instantly without copying data files, while leaving the source table untouched. Which statement fits?
- A.CREATE TABLE books.dev.orders_test DEEP CLONE books.silver.orders
- B.CREATE VIEW books.dev.orders_test AS SELECT * FROM books.silver.orders
- C.CREATE TABLE books.dev.orders_test LIKE books.silver.orders
- D.CREATE TABLE books.dev.orders_test SHALLOW CLONE books.silver.orders
Show answer and explanation
Correct answer: D. CREATE TABLE books.dev.orders_test SHALLOW CLONE books.silver.orders
Why: A shallow clone copies only the table metadata and references the source's existing data files, so it is created quickly, and changes made to the clone are written as new files without affecting the source. A deep clone copies all data files, which takes longer and uses more storage. A view cannot be altered independently to test schema changes, and CREATE TABLE LIKE copies only the definition, with no data.
More free Databricks Data Engineer Associate questions
- Auto Loader schema hints
- Reading notebook task parameters
- collect_set vs collect_list aggregation
- Triggered vs continuous pipeline mode
- Job maximum concurrent runs
- Job task timeout setting
- SHOW GRANTS on Unity Catalog objects
- Transferring object ownership
- Compute policies for cluster governance
- ALTER TABLE ADD COLUMNS on Delta
- Spark lazy evaluation transformations vs actions