Cloud / productivity
Microsoft interview themes
What people report studying for — not a take-home dump. Last editorial update 2026-08-02.
Rounds you should expect
Platform
What you migrate last from Synapse. Shortcuts vs copies. Who owns the semantic model.
From the question bank
hard · SQL · SQL
When do you use a covering index / clustering key versus rewriting the query?
Practice →hard · SQL · SQL
EXPLAIN says Hash Join. When do you want Nested Loop instead?
Practice →medium · Coding · Spark
Broadcast join vs shuffle join. What is the failure mode of a hint?
Practice →easy · Coding · Spark
UDF vs Spark SQL expr for a string normalize. Which do you merge?
Practice →medium · Cloud · Azure
ADF, Synapse, and Fabric — who owns the pipeline?
Practice →easy · Cloud · Azure
Self-hosted IR versus Azure IR. When is on-prem the only answer?
Practice →easy · Cloud · Azure
Incremental load in ADF without a CDC product. What is the watermark pattern?
Practice →easy · Cloud · Azure
OneLake shortcuts vs copying data into Fabric. When do you shortcut?
Practice →medium · Cloud · Azure
Synapse serverless vs dedicated SQL pool. Sixty seconds.
Practice →medium · Cloud · Azure
How do you keep secrets out of an ADF pipeline JSON?
Practice →medium · Cloud · Azure
Purview vs “the pipeline wiki.”
Practice →easy · Cloud · Azure
Mapping data flow on 2 TB vs a Databricks job.
Practice →