Databricks Intelligence Platform

What this chapter covers

Databricks Intelligence Platform is 6% of the Databricks Data Engineer Associate exam. It covers the pieces every other chapter builds on: how the platform is split into a control plane and a compute plane, what Delta Lake and Unity Catalog do, and which compute type fits a workload.

The chapter is small, but its ideas appear across the whole exam. A question about a job, a pipeline or a grant often assumes you already know where data lives, how tables are named and what each compute type costs and allows.

Questions are mostly short scenarios in which the stated requirement (latency, cost, governance, data volume) decides the answer. They are single-answer multiple choice, and any SQL or PySpark is shown as short text. There are no exhibits.

How the topics fit together

The control plane is where you work: the workspace, notebooks, the job scheduler and the Unity Catalog services. Compute does the processing and reads and writes Delta Lake files in cloud storage. Unity Catalog decides who may see those tables.

• Architecture questions ask where a component runs and where data is stored.
• Delta Lake questions ask what the transaction log gives you: ACID writes, time travel and schema enforcement.
• Unity Catalog questions ask about the three level namespace and central governance.
• Compute questions ask which compute type fits a workload on cost, startup time and limitations.

How to use these pages

Each topic page has the same shape, so you can skim for what you need.

• What it is: the idea in plain words.
• How it works: the mechanism, with tables and examples.
• What to remember for the exam: the facts to memorize and how questions are phrased.
• Common mistakes: the classic traps.
• Check yourself: three questions to test your understanding.