DEA-C01 Data Ingestion and Transformation Practice Question
A company wants to transform data in Amazon S3 using SQL queries without provisioning servers. The transformations are ad-hoc and run occasionally. Which service should be used?
⚠ Common exam trap
A common mix-up: candidates confuse AWS Glue's ability to run SQL via Spark SQL or Athena as a transformation engine, but Glue requires provisioning resources and is not designed for ad-hoc serverless SQL queries.
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 Athena
Amazon Athena is the correct choice because it enables serverless, ad-hoc SQL querying directly on data stored in Amazon S3 without requiring any infrastructure provisioning. Since the transformations are occasional and ad-hoc, Athena's pay-per-query model and zero setup overhead align perfectly with the requirement.
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 it's wrong here
Glue is for ETL jobs, not ad-hoc queries.
- ✗
Amazon Redshift Spectrum
Why it's wrong here
Spectrum requires a Redshift cluster.
- ✗
Amazon EMR
Why it's wrong here
EMR requires provisioning and managing a cluster.
- ✓
Amazon Athena
Why this is correct
Athena is serverless and supports SQL queries directly on S3 data.
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.