Exam Databricks-Certified-Data-Analyst-Associate Topic 8 Question 1 Discussion

Higher-order functions are a simple extension to SQL to manipulate nested data such as arrays. A higher-order function takes an array, implements how the array is processed, and what the result of the computation will be. It delegates to a lambda function how to process each item in the array. This allows you to define functions that manipulate arrays in SQL, without having to unpack and repack them, use UDFs, or rely on limited built-in functions. Higher-order functions provide a performance benefit over user defined functions. Reference: Higher-order functions | Databricks on AWS, Working with Nested Data Using Higher Order Functions in SQL on Databricks | Databricks Blog, Higher-order functions - Azure Databricks | Microsoft Learn, Optimization recommendations on Databricks | Databricks on AWS