DEA-C01 Data Ingestion and Transformation Practice Question

A company wants to ingest data from SaaS applications (e.g., Salesforce, Marketo) into Amazon S3 for analytics. The data volume is moderate and updates occur frequently. Which AWS service is BEST suited for this task?

⚠ Common exam trap

Many exam-takers confuse 'streaming' with 'SaaS ingestion' — candidates see 'frequent updates' and jump to Kinesis, but Kinesis has no native SaaS connectors, so AppFlow is the correct managed integration service.

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 purpose-built for ingesting data from SaaS applications such as Salesforce, Marketo, Slack, and Google Analytics into AWS services like Amazon S3. It provides native connectors, supports scheduled or event-driven flows, and handles authentication and incremental transfers without custom code. For moderate-volume, frequently updated SaaS data landing in S3, AppFlow is the most direct and operationally simple fit.

Answer analysis

Option-by-option breakdown

For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.

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Amazon Kinesis Data Streams
Why it's wrong here
Kinesis Data Streams is a real-time streaming service requiring custom producers and consumers; it does not natively poll SaaS REST APIs or write to S3. It is tempting because it handles high-velocity event streams, and would be correct for continuous clickstream or telemetry ingestion rather than moderate, frequent SaaS API updates.
✓
Amazon AppFlow
Why this is correct
Amazon AppFlow provides managed, bidirectional connectors to SaaS applications such as Salesforce and Marketo, writing directly into Amazon S3 without custom code. It supports both scheduled and event-driven flows, satisfying the stem's requirement for frequent updates at moderate volume, unlike AWS DataSync or Storage Gateway, which target file or on-premises transfer rather than SaaS APIs.
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AWS Database Migration Service (DMS)
Why it's wrong here
DMS replicates data between relational databases and data warehouses; it cannot extract from SaaS REST APIs such as Salesforce or Marketo. It is tempting because DMS performs continuous, low-effort replication into S3, and would be correct for migrating or continuously replicating an on-premises or EC2-hosted database.
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AWS Glue
Why it's wrong here
AWS Glue is a serverless ETL and catalog service; its native connectors and crawlers target databases and S3, not SaaS application APIs. It is tempting because Glue jobs can transform and load data into S3, and would be correct for scheduled ETL between supported JDBC or S3 sources, not SaaS ingestion.

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

DEA-C01 Data Ingestion and Transformation Practice Question

Why each option matters

Option-by-option breakdown

AWS S3 Storage Class Comparison

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