DEA-C01 Data Ingestion and Transformation Practice Question
A company is streaming data from an application to Amazon Kinesis Data Streams. The data must be transformed in real time and then stored in Amazon S3 in Parquet format. Which AWS service should be used for the transformation step?
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 Kinesis Data Analytics for Apache Flink.
Amazon Kinesis Data Analytics for Apache Flink is a serverless service that can run Apache Flink applications to perform real-time transformations on streaming data. Option A (Amazon Kinesis Data Firehose with a Lambda transformation) is primarily for loading data and has limitations for complex transformations. Option B (Amazon EMR running Apache Spark Streaming) can work but adds management overhead and is not the simplest managed service. Option D (AWS Lambda with a Kinesis trigger) is suitable for lightweight transformations but may hit execution time limits for complex or long-running transformations.
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 Kinesis Data Firehose with a Lambda transformation.
Why it's wrong here
(Amazon Kinesis Data Firehose with a Lambda transformation) is primarily for loading data and has limitations for complex transformations, and it does not support native Parquet output without additional configuration.
- ✗
Amazon EMR running Apache Spark Streaming.
Why it's wrong here
(Amazon EMR running Apache Spark Streaming) can work but adds management overhead and is not the simplest managed service for this specific use case.
- ✓
Amazon Kinesis Data Analytics for Apache Flink.
Why this is correct
Amazon Kinesis Data Analytics for Apache Flink is a serverless service that can run Apache Flink applications to perform real-time transformations on streaming data and can output to Kinesis Data Firehose for delivery to S3 in Parquet format.
- ✗
AWS Lambda with a Kinesis trigger.
Why it's wrong here
(AWS Lambda with a Kinesis trigger) is suitable for lightweight transformations but may hit execution time limits for complex or long-running transformations and does not natively handle Parquet conversion without additional libraries.
Quick reference
AWS S3 Storage Class Comparison
| Storage Class | Min Duration | Retrieval | Use Case |
|---|---|---|---|
| S3 Standard | None | Immediate | Frequently accessed data |
| S3 Standard-IA | 30 days | Immediate | Infrequent access, rapid retrieval |
| S3 One Zone-IA | 30 days | Immediate | Non-critical infrequent data |
| S3 Intelligent-Tiering | None | Immediate–hours | Unknown or changing access patterns |
| S3 Glacier Instant | 90 days | Milliseconds | Archive with instant retrieval |
| S3 Glacier Flexible | 90 days | Minutes–hours | Archive, flexible retrieval |
| S3 Glacier Deep Archive | 180 days | Hours | Long-term compliance archive |
Go deeper
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Written by Johnson Ajibi, MSc IT Security
Senior Network & Security Engineer · founder of Courseiva
This DEA-C01 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 DEA-C01 exam.