DA-ASSOC Overview — What’s Tested, Common Traps & How to Prepare

Exam snapshot (high level)

• Certification: Databricks Certified Data Analyst Associate (DA‑ASSOC)
• Audience: analysts and analytics engineers working primarily in SQL and dashboards
• Skills level: you should be comfortable writing SQL queries and reasoning about result correctness
• Official details: registration, pricing, and delivery mode can change—use Resources for current info.

What DA‑ASSOC measures (what you should be able to do)

1) Write correct SQL under realistic constraints

• Joins, aggregations, window functions, subqueries/CTEs.
• Null handling, distinct vs group-by logic, and dedup patterns.

2) Build dashboards and share insights

• Creating charts, filtering, parameters, and basic dashboard hygiene.
• Understanding what makes a dashboard trustworthy (definitions, freshness, and consistency).

3) Understand lakehouse data usage (concept-level)

• Tables vs views, schemas/catalogs, and permissions awareness.
• Basic performance intuition: filtering, partition pruning (concept-level), and avoiding overly expensive queries.

Common traps

• Window function misuse (wrong partition/order clause).
• Join mistakes that create duplicate amplification.
• Misinterpreting nulls and filters (especially with LEFT joins).

What to read next

• Study Plan: 30/60/90 day schedules → Open
• Syllabus: objectives by topic → Open
• Cheatsheet: SQL + dashboard pickers → Open
• Practice: drills and mixed sets → Start