CLF-C02 Cloud Technology and Services Practice Question
Which AWS service enables event-driven architectures by acting as a central event bus that routes events from AWS services, SaaS applications, and custom applications to configured targets?
⚠ Common exam trap
Watch out — candidates often confuse Amazon SNS (pub/sub) with an event bus, but SNS lacks rule-based filtering and multi-source event ingestion from SaaS and custom apps, which is the defining feature of EventBridge.
Answer choices
Why each option matters
Answer the question above first, then reveal the full breakdown to understand why each option is right or wrong.
Correct answer & explanation
✓
Amazon EventBridge
Amazon EventBridge is a serverless event bus that ingests events from AWS services, SaaS partners, and custom applications, then routes them to targets like Lambda, Step Functions, or SQS based on configurable rules. It decouples event producers from consumers, enabling event-driven architectures without polling or custom middleware. This matches the question's description of a central event bus for cross-domain event routing.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✗
Amazon SNS
Why it's wrong here
Amazon SNS is a pub/sub messaging service that pushes messages to subscribers (e.g., Lambda, SQS, HTTP endpoints) for simple fan-out. However, SNS lacks advanced event pattern matching and content-based routing; it delivers a single topic message to all subscribers, and its SaaS integrations are limited. EventBridge goes further with declarative event rules, schema registries, archive/replay, and API destinations, making it a more flexible and feature-rich event bus.
- ✗
Amazon SQS
Why it's wrong here
Amazon SQS is a fully managed message queue that decouples components in a point-to-point or fan-out pattern via pull-based polling. It does not support declarative event rules or content-based routing, and it has no built-in SaaS application integrations. SQS simply holds messages until a consumer polls and processes them, making it a transport mechanism rather than an event router.
- ✓
Amazon EventBridge
Why this is correct
Amazon EventBridge is the serverless event bus that powers event-driven architectures by receiving events from AWS services, SaaS applications, and custom apps, then applying declarative rules to route them to targets like Lambda, Step Functions, or SQS. It supports content-based filtering with event patterns, schema discovery, archival, and replay, enabling sophisticated routing that goes beyond simple fan-out. This makes EventBridge the correct choice for enterprise integration across AWS and third-party SaaS sources.
- ✗
AWS Step Functions
Why it's wrong here
AWS Step Functions is a workflow orchestration service that coordinates multiple AWS services into a state machine, handling sequencing, branching, and error handling. While EventBridge can trigger a Step Functions execution, Step Functions itself is not an event bus and cannot ingest, filter, or route events from SaaS providers or multiple event sources. Its role is to define the logic of a process, not to serve as a central routing hub.
Quick reference
Cloud Service Model Comparison
| Model | You Manage | Provider Manages | Examples |
|---|---|---|---|
| IaaS | OS, runtime, apps, data | Hardware, hypervisor, networking | EC2, Azure VMs, GCP Compute Engine |
| PaaS | Apps and data | OS, runtime, middleware, hardware | Elastic Beanstalk, Azure App Service |
| SaaS | Data and settings only | Everything else | Microsoft 365, Salesforce, Workday |
| FaaS / Serverless | Function code only | Infra, scaling, runtime | Lambda, Azure Functions, Cloud Run |
| CaaS | Containers and apps | Kubernetes, OS, hardware | EKS, AKS, GKE |
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JA
Written by Johnson Ajibi, MSc IT Security
Senior Network & Security Engineer · founder of Courseiva
This CLF-C02 practice question is part of Courseiva's free Amazon Web Services certification practice question bank. Courseiva provides original exam-style practice questions with explanations, topic-based practice, mock exams, readiness tracking, and study analytics to help learners prepare for the CLF-C02 exam.