DBX-GENAI study plan

Week 1chapters 1–6 · about 9 hours Done

• Read these chapters:
  • 1. From business need to LLM solution
  • 2. Prompt design and refinement
  • 3. Designing agents and using Agent Bricks
  • 4. Finding and extracting source documents
  • 5. Chunking strategies and embedding context length
  • 6. Writing chunks to Unity Catalog and building an index
• After each chapter, cover its key takeaways and explain each one out loud. Re-read any you can’t.
• Free study notes for this week: Matching a chunking method to document structure.
• Look up any unfamiliar term in the DBX-GENAI glossary.

Exam skill areas this week: Section 1: Design Applications · 14%Section 2: Data Preparation · 14%Section 3: Application Development · 30%Section 4: Assembling and Deploying Applications · 22%

Week 2chapters 7–11 · about 8 hours Done

• Read these chapters:
  • 7. Tuning retrieval: configuration, metrics and re-ranking
  • 8. Selecting models
  • 9. Coding chains and pyfunc models
  • 10. Agent systems: Agent Framework, Genie, MCP and memory
  • 11. Logging, registering and serving
• After each chapter, cover its key takeaways and explain each one out loud. Re-read any you can’t.
• Free study notes for this week: AI Search endpoints: standard or storage-optimized?, LangChain, LangGraph, DSPy or a plain client?, MLflow signatures and input examples, Batch inference with ai_query().
• Look up any unfamiliar term in the DBX-GENAI glossary.

Exam skill areas this week: Section 2: Data Preparation · 14%Section 3: Application Development · 30%Section 4: Assembling and Deploying Applications · 22%Section 6: Evaluation and Monitoring · 12%

Week 3chapters 12–15 · about 8 hours Done

• Read these chapters:
  • 12. Prompts, CI/CD and user interfaces
  • 13. Guardrails and legal risk
  • 14. Evaluating agents with MLflow
  • 15. Monitoring and controlling cost in production
• After each chapter, cover its key takeaways and explain each one out loud. Re-read any you can’t.
• Free study notes for this week: Which MLflow judges need ground truth?, Evaluation and monitoring phases compared.
• Look up any unfamiliar term in the DBX-GENAI glossary.

Exam skill areas this week: Section 3: Application Development · 30%Section 4: Assembling and Deploying Applications · 22%Section 5: Governance · 8%Section 6: Evaluation and Monitoring · 12%

Week 4review Done

• Go back through every chapter’s key takeaways. Anything you can’t explain without looking, re-read that section.
• Re-read the common-trap callouts: they mark the answers that look right but aren’t.
• Check the exam coverage map against Databricks’s own outline, in case it has changed since the book was checked.
• Read the official DBX-GENAI exam guide once more and tick off every objective.

Week 1chapters 1–2 · about 3 hours Done

• Read these chapters:
  • 1. From business need to LLM solution
  • 2. Prompt design and refinement
• After each chapter, cover its key takeaways and explain each one out loud. Re-read any you can’t.
• Look up any unfamiliar term in the DBX-GENAI glossary.

Exam skill areas this week: Section 1: Design Applications · 14%Section 3: Application Development · 30%

Week 2chapters 3–4 · about 4 hours Done

• Read these chapters:
  • 3. Designing agents and using Agent Bricks
  • 4. Finding and extracting source documents
• After each chapter, cover its key takeaways and explain each one out loud. Re-read any you can’t.
• Look up any unfamiliar term in the DBX-GENAI glossary.

Exam skill areas this week: Section 1: Design Applications · 14%Section 2: Data Preparation · 14%

Week 3chapters 5–7 · about 3 hours Done

• Read these chapters:
  • 5. Chunking strategies and embedding context length
  • 6. Writing chunks to Unity Catalog and building an index
  • 7. Tuning retrieval: configuration, metrics and re-ranking
• After each chapter, cover its key takeaways and explain each one out loud. Re-read any you can’t.
• Free study notes for this week: Matching a chunking method to document structure, AI Search endpoints: standard or storage-optimized?.
• Look up any unfamiliar term in the DBX-GENAI glossary.

Exam skill areas this week: Section 2: Data Preparation · 14%Section 3: Application Development · 30%Section 4: Assembling and Deploying Applications · 22%

Week 4chapters 8–9 · about 3 hours Done

• Read these chapters:
  • 8. Selecting models
  • 9. Coding chains and pyfunc models
• After each chapter, cover its key takeaways and explain each one out loud. Re-read any you can’t.
• Free study notes for this week: LangChain, LangGraph, DSPy or a plain client?.
• Look up any unfamiliar term in the DBX-GENAI glossary.

Exam skill areas this week: Section 3: Application Development · 30%Section 4: Assembling and Deploying Applications · 22%Section 6: Evaluation and Monitoring · 12%

Week 5chapters 10–11 · about 4 hours Done

• Read these chapters:
  • 10. Agent systems: Agent Framework, Genie, MCP and memory
  • 11. Logging, registering and serving
• After each chapter, cover its key takeaways and explain each one out loud. Re-read any you can’t.
• Free study notes for this week: MLflow signatures and input examples, Batch inference with ai_query().
• Look up any unfamiliar term in the DBX-GENAI glossary.

Exam skill areas this week: Section 3: Application Development · 30%Section 4: Assembling and Deploying Applications · 22%

Week 6chapters 12–13 · about 4 hours Done

• Read these chapters:
  • 12. Prompts, CI/CD and user interfaces
  • 13. Guardrails and legal risk
• After each chapter, cover its key takeaways and explain each one out loud. Re-read any you can’t.
• Look up any unfamiliar term in the DBX-GENAI glossary.

Exam skill areas this week: Section 3: Application Development · 30%Section 4: Assembling and Deploying Applications · 22%Section 5: Governance · 8%

Week 7chapters 14–15 · about 4 hours Done

• Read these chapters:
  • 14. Evaluating agents with MLflow
  • 15. Monitoring and controlling cost in production
• After each chapter, cover its key takeaways and explain each one out loud. Re-read any you can’t.
• Free study notes for this week: Which MLflow judges need ground truth?, Evaluation and monitoring phases compared.
• Look up any unfamiliar term in the DBX-GENAI glossary.

Exam skill areas this week: Section 3: Application Development · 30%Section 6: Evaluation and Monitoring · 12%

Week 8review Done

• Go back through every chapter’s key takeaways. Anything you can’t explain without looking, re-read that section.
• Re-read the common-trap callouts: they mark the answers that look right but aren’t.
• Check the exam coverage map against Databricks’s own outline, in case it has changed since the book was checked.
• Read the official DBX-GENAI exam guide once more and tick off every objective.