DP-600 study plan: pass in 4 weeks

You can prepare for DP-600 in four weeks at about 8 to 10 hours a week if you already know SQL and have used Power BI. The plan below puts Prepare data first because it is almost half the exam, builds the semantic model skills in week 3, and leaves week 4 for governance, lifecycle and practice. You need a Fabric workspace to do it: a trial or a capacity, because reading alone will not work for this exam.

Before you start, read the current skills outline (see exam format) and run the free practice assessment once to find your weak areas.

Week 1: get data and choose a store

Goal: be able to say which Fabric item fits a scenario and how data reaches it.

• Create a workspace and a lakehouse. Load a CSV, then create a shortcut to another location instead of copying.
• Build a warehouse and load it with COPY INTO or a pipeline copy activity.
• Create an eventhouse and run a simple KQL query.
• Compare the three stores: engine, languages, write support and best fit.
• Explore the OneLake catalog and the Real-Time hub.
• Create a data connection and a Dataflow Gen2 that loads to a lakehouse.

Week 2: transform and query

Goal: write the transformations from memory.

• Model a star schema from a flat file: fact and dimension tables with surrogate keys.
• Denormalise a snowflaked dimension with a join.
• In T-SQL: create views, a scalar or table-valued function and a stored procedure; find duplicates with ROW_NUMBER(); handle nulls with COALESCE; convert types with CAST.
• Do the same transform once in a Dataflow and once in a notebook, so you recognise both.
• Query the same data with the visual query editor, SQL, KQL and a DAX query.

Week 3: semantic models and DAX

Goal: understand storage modes and write correct measures.

• Build a semantic model over a warehouse. Compare Import, DirectQuery and Direct Lake storage modes.
• Write measures with variables, CALCULATE, iterators such as SUMX, and a windowing function.
• Create a calculation group with a time-intelligence item and a dynamic format string. Add a field parameter.
• Build a many-to-many relationship through a bridge table and a composite model.
• Configure incremental refresh with RangeStart and RangeEnd.
• Use Performance Analyzer and look at a slow measure.
• Learn the Direct Lake on OneLake versus SQL analytics endpoint distinction and the fallback behaviour.

Week 4: maintain the solution, then practise

Goal: close governance gaps and test yourself under time.

• Compare workspace roles, item permissions, row-level, column-level, object-level and file-level security.
• Apply a sensitivity label and endorse an item.
• Connect a workspace to Git, save a Power BI Desktop project as .pbip, and build a deployment pipeline with a rule.
• Run impact analysis, and understand the XMLA endpoint.
• Take the free practice test and the official practice assessment under a 100-minute timer.
• Review wrong answers by domain, then use the cheat sheet.

If you are already experienced

If you work in Fabric daily, spend week 1 on a gap check: run the practice assessment, list every objective you have never configured by hand, and do those. Experienced people usually miss the governance bullets (endorsement, labels, file-level access), deployment pipelines, the XMLA endpoint and Direct Lake fallback, because those are rarely part of a normal project.

If you know Power BI but not Fabric, add time for lakehouses, T-SQL and KQL. If you know Spark but not DAX, give week 3 extra days.

Weekly time guide

How to know you are ready

• You score 80% or more on two different sets of practice questions, not the same set twice.
• You can explain, without notes, when to use a lakehouse, a warehouse or an eventhouse.
• You can write a measure with a variable and CALCULATE, a T-SQL view and a KQL summarise from a blank editor.
• You can say what happens when Direct Lake falls back, and which option prevents it.
• You can name the order of steps in a deployment pipeline release and how rules change a data source.
• Your weakest domain is within ten points of your strongest.

When these hold, book the exam. For the booking and the day itself, see the exam day guide.