Databricks Data Analyst study resources

Databricks Academy’s official learning path is free for the self-paced material and is written to the exam. The complication specific to Databricks is that no passing score is published, so a weighted practice test is the only signal you get about readiness.

Start with the official material

The exam guide on the Databricks certification page, which lists the sections and their weights. Executing queries with Databricks SQL carries 20%, dashboards and visualisations 16%, analysing queries 15%, Genie spaces 12%, platform understanding 11%, and managing, securing and importing data 21% between them.

Databricks Academy. The self-paced learning path for this exam is free and official. Work through it in order.

The Databricks SQL documentation for warehouse behaviour — serverless versus classic startup, auto-stop, and what the query profile actually shows you.

Practice in a workspace

A community or trial workspace is enough for most of this.

• Read a query profile on a slow query and find where the time goes. This is the exam’s recurring troubleshooting move.
• Filter on a partitioned date column and compare the data scanned against an unfiltered query. File skipping becomes concrete.
• Build a dashboard with a parameter so viewers can change a filter without editing SQL.
• Set up a scheduled refresh with subscription delivery.
• Curate a Genie space with table and column comments and example questions, then ask it something ambiguous and see what happens.
• Apply a row filter and a column mask and query as a user without the privilege.

The passing score problem

Databricks does not publish passing scores. Any specific percentage you encounter — in a forum, a blog or a paid course — is a guess.

The practical consequence: you cannot calibrate against an official threshold. A practice test weighted to the real sections is the best available proxy, which makes it more valuable here than for exams with a published target. The free 20-question test in this section is weighted accordingly.

Worth paying for

A practice test with explanations, for the reason above.

Instructor-led Databricks training, if your employer funds it. Out of pocket it is expensive against free self-paced material.

What to skip

Braindumps.

Spark internals. That is the Spark Developer Associate exam. This one is about analysis with Databricks SQL.

Data engineering pipeline material. Also a different exam — see Data Engineer Associate.

A sensible order

1. Read the exam guide and note the section weights.
2. Work through the Academy learning path.
3. Practise the six workspace exercises above.
4. Take the practice test.
5. Return to the Academy module for the weakest section.

Where this sits

The Databricks certification path explains why the analyst exam is its own lane rather than a step towards data engineering, and there is no professional exam above it.