Azure Data Scientists Associate Practice Exam

When frequently changing schemas are a factor, what type of data asset should be created?

1. URI file

2. URI folder

3. MLTable

4. DataFrame

The correct answer is: MLTable

Creating an MLTable is the appropriate choice when dealing with frequently changing schemas. An MLTable is designed to facilitate the organization and management of varied data structures, making it particularly useful in scenarios where data can evolve or change often. This asset type allows data scientists to define a schema for machine learning workloads that can handle dynamic datasets, providing greater flexibility to accommodate changes in data format and structure. MLTables offer built-in support for versioning and can represent data in a way that easily adapts to evolving requirements. By leveraging MLTable, data scientists can benefit from structured representation while ensuring compatibility with machine learning processes, even as the underlying data structure shifts. In contrast, using a URI file or folder would not be optimal for handling dynamic schemas, as these options are more static in nature. A DataFrame, while useful for many data manipulation tasks, is not inherently designed to manage changing schemas and lacks the versioning capabilities that an MLTable provides. Therefore, an MLTable stands out as the most suitable choice in this context for managing complexities related to frequently changing schemas.