Databricks Certified Data Engineer - Associate

Explanation

ACID-compliant transactions are a key feature of data lakehouses that significantly improve data quality compared to traditional data lakes. Here's why:

Traditional Data Lakes:

• Typically lack ACID (Atomicity, Consistency, Isolation, Durability) guarantees
• Multiple concurrent writes can lead to data corruption or inconsistent reads
• No transaction management means partial writes can leave data in an inconsistent state

Data Lakehouses with ACID Compliance:

1. Atomicity: Ensures all operations in a transaction complete successfully or none do
2. Consistency: Guarantees data remains in a valid state before and after transactions
3. Isolation: Prevents concurrent transactions from interfering with each other
4. Durability: Ensures committed transactions persist even in case of system failures

Why this improves data quality:

• Prevents data corruption from concurrent writes
• Ensures data consistency during ETL/ELT processes
• Enables reliable data updates and deletes
• Supports time travel and data versioning
• Allows for reliable data governance and compliance

While the other options describe features of data lakehouses:

• A: Open formats are important for interoperability but don't directly improve data quality
• B: SQL query capability improves accessibility but not inherent data quality
• C: Multi-modal storage is a feature but doesn't guarantee data quality

ACID transactions directly address the data quality challenges that plague traditional data lakes by providing the reliability guarantees needed for production data workloads.