DEA-C01 Data Ingestion and Transformation Practice Question
A company wants to schedule a nightly batch job to copy data from an on-premises PostgreSQL database to Amazon S3. The solution must minimize operational overhead. Which AWS service should be used?
⚠ Common exam trap
Watch out — candidates often confuse AWS DMS (designed for continuous replication) with batch data movement, overlooking that DMS's ongoing replication feature is not intended for scheduled batch jobs and adds unnecessary overhead for a simple nightly copy.
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
✓
AWS Glue
AWS Glue is the correct choice because it provides a fully managed ETL service that can connect to on-premises PostgreSQL via JDBC, extract data, and write it to Amazon S3 with minimal configuration. Glue's built-in scheduler can run the job nightly, eliminating the need to manage servers or orchestration infrastructure, which directly meets the requirement to minimize operational overhead.
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 Glue
Why this is correct
AWS Glue can run scheduled ETL jobs to read from PostgreSQL and write to S3 with minimal overhead.
- ✗
AWS Data Pipeline
Why it's wrong here
AWS Data Pipeline requires managing pipeline definitions, EC2 instances for task runners, and retry logic, which adds operational overhead that the question explicitly seeks to minimise. It is tempting because Data Pipeline can copy from JDBC sources to S3, and would be correct if the company needed complex orchestration with conditional branching or on-failure actions, rather than a simple nightly schedule.
- ✗
Amazon EMR
Why it's wrong here
EMR requires cluster management, adding operational overhead.
- ✗
AWS Database Migration Service (AWS DMS) with ongoing replication
Why it's wrong here
DMS is for continuous migration/replication, not a simple nightly batch copy.
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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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.