Pass the Databricks Certification Databricks-Certified-Associate-Developer-for-Apache-Spark-3.0 Questions and answers with ExamsMirror

Explanation

To solve this question, you need to know that DataFrame.sample() is not guaranteed to return the exact fraction of the number of rows specified as an argument. Furthermore, since duplicates may

be returned, you should understand that the operator's withReplacement argument should be set to True. A force= argument for the operator does not exist.

While the take argument returns an exact number of rows, it will just take the first specified number of rows (1000 in this question) from the DataFrame. Since the DataFrame does not include

duplicate rows, there is no potential of any of those returned rows being duplicates when using take(), so the correct answer cannot involve take().

More info: pyspark.sql.DataFrame.sample — PySpark 3.1.2 documentation

Static notebook | Dynamic notebook: See test 2, QUESTION NO: 41 (Databricks import instructions)

Explanation

The default number of partitions to use when shuffling data for joins or aggregations is 300.

No, the default value of the applicable property spark.sql.shuffle.partitions is 200.

The maximum number of tasks that an executor can process at the same time is controlled by the spark.executor.cores property.

Correct, see below.

The maximum number of tasks that an executor can process at the same time is controlled by the spark.task.cpus property.

Correct, the maximum number of tasks that an executor can process in parallel depends on both properties spark.task.cpus and spark.executor.cores. This is because the available number of slots

is calculated by dividing the number of cores per executor by the number of cores per task. For more info specifically to this point, check out Spark Architecture | Distributed Systems Architecture.

More info: Configuration - Spark 3.1.2 Documentation

Explanation

This QUESTION NO: asks for your knowledge about the cast syntax. cast is a method of the Column class. It is worth noting that one could also convert a column type using the Column.astype()

method, which is just an alias for cast.

Find more info in the documentation linked below.

More info: pyspark.sql.Column.cast — PySpark 3.1.2 documentation

Static notebook | Dynamic notebook: See test 2, QUESTION NO: 33 (Databricks import instructions)

Explanation

DataFrame.repartition(6)

Correct. repartition() always triggers a full shuffle (different from coalesce()).

DataFrame.repartition(12)

No, this would just leave the DataFrame with 12 partitions and not 6.

DataFrame.coalesce(6)

coalesce does not perform a full shuffle of the data. Whenever you see "full shuffle", you know that you are not dealing with coalesce(). While coalesce() can perform a partial shuffle when required,

it will try to minimize shuffle operations, so the amount of data that is sent between executors.

Here, 12 partitions can easily be repartitioned to be 6 partitions simply by stitching every two partitions into one.

DataFrame.coalesce(6, shuffle=True) and DataFrame.coalesce(6).shuffle()

These statements are not valid Spark API syntax.

More info: Spark Repartition & Coalesce - Explained and Repartition vs Coalesce in Apache Spark - Rock the JVM Blog

Explanation

itemsDf.sample(fraction=0.1, seed=87238)

Correct. If itemsDf has 10,000 rows, this code block returns about 1,000, since DataFrame.sample() is never guaranteed to return an exact amount of rows. To ensure you are not returning

duplicates, you should leave the withReplacement parameter at False, which is the default. Since the QUESTION NO: specifies that the same rows should be returned even if the code block is run

twice,

you need to specify a seed. The number passed in the seed does not matter as long as it is an integer.

itemsDf.sample(withReplacement=True, fraction=0.1, seed=23536)

Incorrect. While this code block fulfills almost all requirements, it may return duplicates. This is because withReplacement is set to True.

Here is how to understand what replacement means: Imagine you have a bucket of 10,000 numbered balls and you need to take 1,000 balls at random from the bucket (similar to the problem in the

question). Now, if you would take those balls with replacement, you would take a ball, note its number, and put it back into the bucket, meaning the next time you take a ball from the bucket there

would be a chance you could take the exact same ball again. If you took the balls without replacement, you would leave the ball outside the bucket and not put it back in as you take the next 999

balls.

itemsDf.sample(fraction=1000, seed=98263)

Wrong. The fraction parameter needs to have a value between 0 and 1. In this case, it should be 0.1, since 1,000/10,000 = 0.1.

itemsDf.sampleBy("row", fractions={0: 0.1}, seed=82371)

No, DataFrame.sampleBy() is meant for stratified sampling. This means that based on the values in a column in a DataFrame, you can draw a certain fraction of rows containing those values from

the DataFrame (more details linked below). In the scenario at hand, sampleBy is not the right operator to use because you do not have any information about any column that the sampling should

depend on.

itemsDf.sample(fraction=0.1)

Incorrect. This code block checks all the boxes except that it does not ensure that when you run it a second time, the exact same rows will be returned. In order to achieve this, you would have to

specify a seed.

More info:

- pyspark.sql.DataFrame.sample — PySpark 3.1.2 documentation

- pyspark.sql.DataFrame.sampleBy — PySpark 3.1.2 documentation

- Types of Samplings in PySpark 3. The explanations of the sampling… | by Pinar Ersoy | Towards Data Science

Explanation

transactionsDf.withColumn("transactionDateFormatted", from_unixtime("transactionDate", format="MM/dd/yyyy"))

Correct. This code block adds a new column with the name transactionDateFormatted to DataFrame transactionsDf, using Spark's from_unixtime method to transform values in column

transactionDate into strings, following the format requested in the question.

transactionsDf.withColumn("transactionDateFormatted", from_unixtime("transactionDate", format="dd/MM/yyyy"))

No. Although almost correct, this uses the wrong format for the timestamp to date conversion: day/month/year instead of month/day/year.

transactionsDf.withColumnRenamed("transactionDate", "transactionDateFormatted", from_unixtime("transactionDateFormatted", format="MM/dd/yyyy"))

Incorrect. This answer uses wrong syntax. The command DataFrame.withColumnRenamed() is for renaming an existing column only has two string parameters, specifying the old and the new name

of the column.

transactionsDf.apply(from_unixtime(format="MM/dd/yyyy")).asColumn("transactionDateFormatted")

Wrong. Although this answer looks very tempting, it is actually incorrect Spark syntax. In Spark, there is no method DataFrame.apply(). Spark has an apply() method that can be used on grouped

data – but this is irrelevant for this question, since we do not deal with grouped data here.

transactionsDf.withColumn("transactionDateFormatted", from_unixtime("transactionDate"))

No. Although this is valid Spark syntax, the strings in column transactionDateFormatted would look like this: 2020-04-26 15:35:32, the default format specified in Spark for from_unixtime and not

what is asked for in the question.

More info: pyspark.sql.functions.from_unixtime — PySpark 3.1.1 documentation and pyspark.sql.DataFrame.withColumnRenamed — PySpark 3.1.1 documentation

Static notebook | Dynamic notebook: See test 1, QUESTION NO: 39 (Databricks import instructions)

Explanation

Correct code block:

transactionsDfMonday.unionByName(transactionsDfTuesday, True)

Output of correct code block:

+-------------+---------+-----+-------+---------+----+

|transactionId|predError|value|storeId|productId| f|

+-------------+---------+-----+-------+---------+----+

| 5| null| null| null| 2|null|

| 6| 3| 2| 25| 2|null|

| 1| null| 4| 25| 1|null|

| 2| null| 7| 2| 2|null|

| 4| null| null| 3| 2|null|

| 5| null| null| null| 2|null|

+-------------+---------+-----+-------+---------+----+

For solving this question, you should be aware of the difference between the DataFrame.union() and DataFrame.unionByName() methods. The first one matches columns independent of their

names, just by their order. The second one matches columns by their name (which is asked for in the question). It also has a useful optional argument, allowMissingColumns. This allows you to

merge DataFrames that have different columns - just like in this example.

sc stands for SparkContext and is automatically provided when executing code on Databricks. While sc.union() allows you to join RDDs, it is not the right choice for joining DataFrames. A hint away

from sc.union() is given where the QUESTION NO: talks about joining "into a new DataFrame".

concat is a method in pyspark.sql.functions. It is great for consolidating values from different columns, but has no place when trying to join rows of multiple DataFrames.

Finally, the join method is a contender here. However, the default join defined for that method is an inner join which does not get us closer to the goal to match the two DataFrames as instructed,

especially given that with the default arguments we cannot define a join condition.

More info:

- pyspark.sql.DataFrame.unionByName — PySpark 3.1.2 documentation

- pyspark.SparkContext.union — PySpark 3.1.2 documentation

- pyspark.sql.functions.concat — PySpark 3.1.2 documentation

Static notebook | Dynamic notebook: See test 3, QUESTION NO: 45 (Databricks import instructions)

Explanation

Spark's DataFrames are equal to Python's or R's DataFrames.

No, they are not equal. They are only similar. A major difference between Spark and Python is that Spark's DataFrames are distributed, whereby Python's are not.

Explanation

Correct code block: transactionsDf.drop("productId", "f")

This QUESTION NO: requires a lot of thinking to get right. For solving it, you may take advantage of the digital notepad that is provided to you during the test. You have probably seen that the code

block

includes multiple errors. In the test, you are usually confronted with a code block that only contains a single error. However, since you are practicing here, this challenging multi-error QUESTION

NO: will

make it easier for you to deal with single-error questions in the real exam.

The select operator should be replaced by a drop operator, the column names should be listed directly as arguments to the operator and not as a list, and all column names should be expressed as

strings without being wrapped in a col() operator.

Correct! Here, you need to figure out the many, many things that are wrong with the initial code block. While the QUESTION NO: can be solved by using a select statement, a drop statement, given

the

answer options, is the correct one. Then, you can read in the documentation that drop does not take a list as an argument, but just the column names that should be dropped. Finally, the column

names should be expressed as strings and not as Python variable names as in the original code block.

The column names should be listed directly as arguments to the operator and not as a list.

Incorrect. While this is a good first step and part of the correct solution (see above), this modification is insufficient to solve the question.

The column names should be listed directly as arguments to the operator and not as a list and following the pattern of how column names are expressed in the code block, columns productId and f

should be replaced by transactionId, predError, value and storeId.

Wrong. If you use the same pattern as in the original code block (col(productId), col(f)), you are still making a mistake. col(productId) will trigger Python to search for the content of a variable named

productId instead of telling Spark to use the column productId - for that, you need to express it as a string.

The select operator should be replaced by a drop operator, the column names should be listed directly as arguments to the operator and not as a list, and all col() operators should be removed.

No. This still leaves you with Python trying to interpret the column names as Python variables (see above).

The select operator should be replaced by a drop operator.

Wrong, this is not enough to solve the question. If you do this, you will still face problems since you are passing a Python list to drop and the column names are still interpreted as Python variables

(see above).

More info: pyspark.sql.DataFrame.drop — PySpark 3.1.2 documentation

Static notebook | Dynamic notebook: See test 3, QUESTION NO: 30 (Databricks import instructions)

Explanation

Correct code block:

len(spark.read.csv(filePath, comment='#').columns)

This is a challenging QUESTION NO: with difficulties in an unusual context: The boundary between DataFrame and the DataFrameReader. It is unlikely that a QUESTION NO: of this difficulty level

appears in the

exam. However, solving it helps you get more comfortable with the DataFrameReader, a subject you will likely have to deal with in the exam.

Before dealing with the inner parentheses, it is easier to figure out the outer parentheses, gaps 1 and 5. Given the code block, the object in gap 5 would have to be evaluated by the object in gap 1,

returning the number of columns in the read-in CSV. One answer option includes DataFrame in gap 1 and shape[0] in gap 2. Since DataFrame cannot be used to evaluate shape[0], we can discard

this answer option.

Other answer options include size in gap 1. size() is not a built-in Python command, so if we use it, it would have to come from somewhere else. pyspark.sql.functions includes a size() method, but

this method only returns the length of an array or map stored within a column (documentation linked below). So, using a size() method is not an option here. This leaves us with two potentially valid

answers.

We have to pick between gaps 2 and 3 being spark.read or pyspark.DataFrameReader. Looking at the documentation (linked below), the DataFrameReader is actually a child class of pyspark.sql,

which means that we cannot import it using pyspark.DataFrameReader. Moreover, spark.read makes sense because on Databricks, spark references current Spark session

(pyspark.sql.SparkSession) and spark.read therefore returns a DataFrameReader (also see documentation below). Finally, there is only one correct answer option remaining.

More info:

- pyspark.sql.functions.size — PySpark 3.1.2 documentation

- pyspark.sql.DataFrameReader.csv — PySpark 3.1.2 documentation

- pyspark.sql.SparkSession.read — PySpark 3.1.2 documentation

Static notebook | Dynamic notebook: See test 3, QUESTION NO: 50 (Databricks import instructions)