DEA-C01 Data Ingestion and Transformation Practice Question
A company needs to ingest data from multiple SaaS sources (e.g., Salesforce, Marketo) into Amazon S3 for analytics. Which AWS service is designed for this purpose?
⚠ Common exam trap
Test-takers frequently confuse AWS Glue's ETL capabilities with native SaaS connectivity, but Glue requires custom connectors or AWS Glue Studio's visual ETL jobs to connect to SaaS sources, whereas AppFlow is purpose-built for this task.
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 AppFlow
Amazon AppFlow is a fully managed integration service specifically designed to securely transfer data between SaaS applications (like Salesforce, Marketo, Slack, and Zendesk) and AWS services such as Amazon S3 and Amazon Redshift. It supports scheduled, event-driven, or on-demand data ingestion with built-in transformations, filtering, and validation, making it the ideal choice for this use case.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✗
AWS Transfer Family
Why it's wrong here
AWS Transfer Family provides managed SFTP, FTPS and FTP endpoints into Amazon S3; it expects clients to push files and cannot poll SaaS APIs. It is tempting because files arriving over SFTP land directly in Amazon S3, but Salesforce and Marketo expose REST APIs, not file-transfer endpoints.
- ✗
AWS Glue
Why it's wrong here
AWS Glue is a serverless ETL and data-catalogue service; it transforms and catalogs data already in AWS, and does not itself connect to Salesforce or Marketo. It is tempting because Glue jobs often process SaaS exports, and it would be correct once that data has landed in Amazon S3.
- ✓
Amazon AppFlow
Why this is correct
Amazon AppFlow provides managed connectors for SaaS sources such as Salesforce and Marketo, transferring data directly into Amazon S3 without custom code. This satisfies the stem's requirement to ingest from multiple SaaS applications into S3 for analytics.
- ✗
AWS DataSync
Why it's wrong here
AWS DataSync transfers files between on-premises storage, other cloud file systems and AWS storage services; it cannot query Salesforce or Marketo APIs. It is tempting because DataSync lands data in Amazon S3, the target here, but it moves file-based data rather than extracting records from SaaS applications.
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 |
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JA
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.