Identify Delta Table Maintenance with Spark SQL

DP-600 By islever Editorial Last updated Oct 4, 2026

Maintain the analytics development lifecycle

Short answer

B You must use DESCRIBE HISTORY, not DESCRIBE DETAIL, to identify whether maintenance tasks were performed on a Delta table.

Question

Note: This question is part of a series of questions that present the same scenario. Each question in the series contains a unique solution that might meet the stated goals. Some question sets might have more than one correct solution, while others might not have a correct solution. After you answer a question in this section, you will NOT be able to return to it. As a result, these questions will not appear in the review screen. You have a Fabric tenant that contains a lakehouse named Lakehouse1. Lakehouse1 contains a Delta table named Customer. When you query Customer, you discover that the query is slow to execute. You suspect that maintenance was NOT performed on the table. You need to identify whether maintenance tasks were performed on Customer. Solution: You run the following Spark SQL statement: DESCRIBE DETAIL customer - Does this meet the goal?

Yes
No Correct Answer

Key Takeaways

The question tests knowledge of Delta table Spark SQL commands; the common trap is confusing DESCRIBE DETAIL (metadata) with DESCRIBE HISTORY (operation log).

Running DESCRIBE DETAIL on a Delta table reveals its metadata and configuration, but it does not show the history of maintenance operations. This page establishes that DESCRIBE HISTORY is the correct command to identify if maintenance tasks were performed.

Common mistake: Choosing Yes because DESCRIBE DETAIL returns table information, mistakenly assuming it includes maintenance history.

Expert Analysis

Why the Answer Is Correct

The correct answer is No because DESCRIBE DETAIL only provides metadata about the Delta table, such as schema, partitioning, and location. It does not return the history of operations, making it impossible to determine if maintenance tasks like OPTIMIZE or VACUUM were executed.

Why the Other Options Are Wrong

Option A (Yes) is incorrect because it assumes DESCRIBE DETAIL includes operational history. To actually see if maintenance was performed, one must use DESCRIBE HISTORY, which lists all commits and operations on the table.

Community Comment Notes

As bigdave987 noted, "DESCRIBE HISTORY will show maintenance history of the table." Similarly, stilferx pointed out that "Describe Detail give general info about delta table, not the historical operations."

Official Reference

These links open the official vendor documentation in a new tab.

Exam Strategy

Know the difference between DESCRIBE DETAIL and DESCRIBE HISTORY for Delta tables. DESCRIBE DETAIL is for schema and properties, while DESCRIBE HISTORY is for auditing operations and maintenance.

Community Votes

100%

100% of anonymous learners picked answer B. Votes are pick records left by other test-takers — they are not the verified answer.

Discussion 3 contributions

Compiled from public community threads and reader submissions, lightly edited for clarity. Handles and vote tallies are shown as recorded, and comments reflect the views of individual contributors, not of islever. The comments shown first are the most substantive of the thread — ranked by depth, community endorsement and relevance; expand the list below to read the rest.

From public community threads 3

stilferx 👍 5 Answered B

IMHO, No. Describe Detail give general info about delta table, not the historical operations. https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/databricks/delta/table-details
bigdave987 👍 4 Answered B

DESCRIBE HISTORY will show maintenance history of the table.
Nefirs 👍 11

should be DESCRIBE HISTORY

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