DEA-C01 Data Ingestion and Transformation Practice Test 35 — 15 Questions

Question 1

A data engineer is implementing a CDC (Change Data Capture) pipeline from a relational database to Amazon S3 using AWS Database Migration Service (DMS). Which TWO configurations are required for continuous replication?

Accepted Answer

Enable binary logging on the source database.. Options A and C are correct. To enable ongoing replication, DMS needs to have full load completed (A) and the source database must have continuous change capture enabled (e.g., binary logs for MySQL) (C). Option B is wrong because the target table must exist before replication. Option D is wrong because DMS does not need a VPC endpoint; it connects via the internet or VPN. Option E is wrong because transformation rules are optional.

Answer

Define transformation rules in the DMS task.

Answer

Configure a VPC endpoint for DMS.

Answer

Pre-create the target table in S3.

Question 2

A company wants to ingest real-time streaming data from thousands of IoT devices into AWS for immediate processing. Which service is designed for ingesting large volumes of streaming data with low latency?

Accepted Answer

Amazon Kinesis Data Streams. Amazon Kinesis Data Streams is purpose-built for real-time streaming data ingestion at scale. Option A (SQS) is pull-based and not optimized for streaming; Option C (S3) is object storage; Option D (DMS) is for database migration.

Answer

Amazon Simple Storage Service (S3)

Answer

AWS Database Migration Service (DMS)

Answer

Amazon Simple Queue Service (SQS)

Question 3

A data engineering team needs to ingest CSV files from an S3 bucket into a Redshift cluster on a daily basis. The files are large (up to 100 GB each). Which approach is MOST cost-effective and efficient?

Accepted Answer

Use the Redshift COPY command with an IAM role to load data directly from S3.. Using the COPY command with IAM role is the recommended way to load large data into Redshift efficiently. Option B (AWS Data Pipeline) adds cost and complexity; Option C (Kinesis Firehose) is for streaming; Option D (Lambda) has time and memory limits.

Answer

Use Amazon Kinesis Data Firehose to load data into Redshift.

Answer

Use AWS Data Pipeline to copy data from S3 to Redshift.

Answer

Use a Lambda function to read each file and insert rows individually.

Question 4

A company ingests JSON data from an S3 bucket into a Glue ETL job. The data contains nested structures and arrays. The team wants to flatten the data into a tabular format for analysis in Athena. Which Glue transformation is appropriate?

Accepted Answer

Relationalize. The Relationalize transformation is specifically designed to flatten nested JSON into relational tables. Option A (DropNullFields) removes nulls; Option C (Map) applies a function; Option D (Filter) selects rows.

Answer

Map

Answer

Filter

Answer

DropNullFields

Question 5

A data pipeline uses AWS Glue to process data from an S3 data lake. The pipeline fails intermittently with a 'ThrottlingException' when writing to a DynamoDB table. What is the MOST likely cause?

Accepted Answer

The DynamoDB table's write capacity is insufficient for the workload.. A ThrottlingException from DynamoDB indicates that the request rate to the table has exceeded the provisioned write capacity. AWS Glue jobs can generate high-throughput writes, and if the DynamoDB table's write capacity units (WCUs) are not sufficient to handle the burst, DynamoDB will throttle the requests. This is the most direct cause of the intermittent failure described.

Answer

The network connection between Glue and DynamoDB is unstable.

Answer

The Glue job's timeout setting is too low.

Answer

The Glue job does not have sufficient IAM permissions to write to DynamoDB.

Question 6

A company uses Amazon Kinesis Data Firehose to deliver streaming data to an S3 bucket. The data must be transformed from JSON to Parquet format before delivery. Which approach should be used?

Accepted Answer

Configure Kinesis Data Firehose to invoke a Lambda function for data transformation.. Kinesis Data Firehose can invoke a Lambda function as a transformation step before data is delivered to S3. This allows you to convert JSON records to Parquet format inline, without needing an intermediate storage or separate processing pipeline. The Lambda function receives batches of records, transforms them (e.g., using PyArrow or similar libraries), and returns them to Firehose for delivery.

Answer

Use an AWS Glue ETL job to read from S3 and write Parquet back to S3.

Answer

Use Amazon EMR to process the data and output Parquet.

Answer

Use Kinesis Data Analytics to convert the data to Parquet.

Question 7

A data engineer uses AWS Glue to catalog data from an S3 bucket. The data is partitioned by year, month, day. After adding new partitions, the Glue Crawler does not detect them. What is the MOST likely reason?

Accepted Answer

The crawler is configured to only add new partitions to existing tables, but the table schema has changed.. Option A is correct because the Glue Crawler, by default, is configured to add new partitions only if the table schema remains unchanged. When new partitions are added to an S3 bucket, if the underlying data schema has changed (e.g., new columns, different data types), the crawler will not add those partitions to the existing table. This is a common safeguard to prevent schema drift from corrupting the cataloged table structure.

Answer

The crawler runs only once and does not schedule subsequent runs.

Answer

The IAM role lacks permission to write to the Glue Data Catalog.

Answer

The partition depth exceeds the crawler's default limit.

Question 8

A company needs to ingest data from an on-premises database to Amazon S3 with minimal impact on the source database. The data volume is several TB. Which AWS service is best suited for this task?

Accepted Answer

AWS Database Migration Service (DMS). AWS DMS can perform a full load with minimal impact on source. Option B (S3 Transfer Acceleration) is for speeding up uploads; Option C (Direct Connect) is a network connection; Option D (Snowball) is for offline transfer.

Answer

AWS Direct Connect

Answer

AWS Snowball Edge

Answer

Amazon S3 Transfer Acceleration

Question 9

A real-time analytics application uses Amazon Kinesis Data Streams. The consumer application falls behind, causing increased latency. Which action would MOST effectively improve throughput?

Accepted Answer

Increase the number of shards in the data stream.. Increasing the number of shards in the Kinesis Data Stream directly increases the stream's read capacity (each shard supports up to 2 MB/s read and 5 transactions per second for shared throughput). This allows the consumer application to process more data in parallel, reducing the backlog and latency. The question specifies a consumer application falling behind, which is a read-throughput bottleneck, and scaling shards is the most effective way to address it.

Answer

Reduce the RecordMaxBufferedTime parameter in the Firehose delivery stream.

Answer

Increase the batch size in the Kinesis Producer Library.

Answer

Use enhanced fan-out to dedicate a shard per consumer.

Question 10

A data pipeline uses AWS Glue ETL to process data from an S3 bucket and write results to a Redshift cluster. The job fails with a 'DiskFull' error on the Glue worker nodes. What is the best way to resolve this issue?

Accepted Answer

Increase the number of Glue DPUs or use G.1X worker type.. Increasing the number of DPUs or using G.1X worker types provides more disk space. Option A (increase timeout) doesn't help; Option B (use G.2X) is better; Option D (compression) might reduce data size but not the root cause.

Answer

Decrease the number of partitions in the output.

Answer

Use a different file format like Parquet to reduce storage.

Answer

Increase the job timeout setting.

Question 11

Which TWO services can be used to ingest streaming data into Amazon S3? (Choose two.)

Accepted Answer

Amazon Kinesis Data Streams. Amazon Kinesis Data Streams is a real-time streaming service that can ingest and store streaming data, which can then be consumed and written to Amazon S3 using a Kinesis Data Analytics or a custom consumer application. Amazon Kinesis Data Firehose is a fully managed service that can directly load streaming data into Amazon S3, Amazon Redshift, or Amazon Elasticsearch Service, with optional data transformation and compression.

Answer

Amazon Athena

Answer

AWS Glue

Answer

AWS Database Migration Service (DMS)

Question 12

Which THREE factors should be considered when choosing between AWS Glue and Amazon EMR for data transformation? (Choose three.)

Accepted Answer

EMR allows fine-grained control over cluster configuration and software.. Option B is correct because Amazon EMR provides full control over cluster configuration, including the ability to customize software, install libraries, and tune Spark, Hadoop, or Hive parameters. This fine-grained control is essential for complex or specialized data transformation pipelines that require specific versions or custom configurations.

Answer

Glue automatically stores data in S3 after transformation.

Answer

EMR supports real-time stream processing with Spark Streaming.

Question 13

Which TWO AWS services can be used as sources for AWS Glue ETL jobs? (Choose two.)

Accepted Answer

Amazon S3. Glue can read from S3 and JDBC sources like RDS and Redshift. Option C (API Gateway) is not a data store; Option D (CloudFront) is a CDN; Option E (Route 53) is DNS.

Answer

Amazon Route 53

Answer

Amazon CloudFront

Answer

Amazon API Gateway

Question 14

A data engineering team needs to ingest streaming data from an application into Amazon S3 for analytics. The data volume is moderate and the team wants the lowest operational overhead. Which AWS service should they use?

Accepted Answer

Amazon Kinesis Data Firehose. Option B is correct because Amazon Kinesis Data Firehose is a fully managed service for loading streaming data into S3 with no code required. Option A is wrong because Amazon Kinesis Data Streams requires custom consumers. Option C is wrong because AWS Glue is for batch ETL, not real-time. Option D is wrong because Amazon SQS is a message queue, not optimized for streaming analytics destinations.

Answer

Amazon SQS

Answer

AWS Glue

Answer

Amazon Kinesis Data Streams

Question 15

A company uses Amazon Kinesis Data Analytics to process real-time data. The application needs to aggregate data over a 10-minute window. The team notices that late-arriving events are being dropped. Which configuration should they adjust?

Accepted Answer

Set the allowed_lateness parameter in the application's windowed aggregation.. Option C is correct because Kinesis Data Analytics allows you to set a lateness tolerance (allowed_lateness) for streaming aggregations. Option A is wrong because RecordColumn is for schema. Option B is wrong because ShardCount affects parallelism, not late events. Option D is wrong because the application uses Kinesis Data Analytics, not Firehose.

Answer

Configure a Kinesis Firehose delivery stream to buffer the late events.

Answer

Increase the shard count of the source Kinesis stream.

Answer

Increase the RecordColumn count in the input stream mapping.