DP-900 · 1 Describe core data concepts
Data analyst role
Exam objective: Describe responsibilities for data analysts
A data analyst explores data to find trends, then turns them into reports and visualizations that help an organization decide and act.
A data analyst's job is to help an organization get value from data it already has. That starts with exploring the data to find trends and relationships that matter to the business, rather than data the analyst finds merely interesting.
From there, a data analyst designs and builds analytical models and turns them into reports and visualizations that enable advanced analytics. The point of the work is to process raw data into insights tied to a specific business requirement, so that the organization can make an informed decision.
A data analyst is not responsible for building or monitoring the pipelines that bring data into the store they query. That responsibility sits with a data engineer. The analyst's work begins once that data is already reliable and available.
Microsoft Learn notes that AI tools can help a data analyst summarize a report, suggest a visualization or generate an analytical expression from natural language, while the business understanding and communication behind the work remain the analyst's own.
On the exam, look for trends and relationships, analytical models, visualizations or informed decisions.
Key points
- A data analyst explores and analyzes data to identify trends and relationships that matter to the business.
- They design and build analytical models, and turn them into reports and visualizations.
- The goal is to process raw data into insights that answer an identified business requirement, not just to describe the data.
- AI tools can help a data analyst summarize a report, suggest a visualization or generate an analytical expression, but the business understanding behind the work stays with the analyst.
Exam trap
A data analyst does not build the pipelines that deliver the data; that is a data engineer's job. The analyst's work starts once reliable data is already available to query.
Check yourself
A marketing team wants to understand which customer segments respond best to a campaign, and needs a clear report for executives. Who is primarily responsible for producing this?
Go deeper on Microsoft Learn
Checked against Microsoft Learn on October 1, 2026.