DEA-C01 Data Ingestion and Transformation Practice Question
A data engineer is designing a data ingestion pipeline for a social media company. The pipeline ingests user posts from a REST API into Amazon S3. The API returns JSON data with an array of posts. The engineer needs to transform the data into individual JSON objects per post and store them in S3 with a partition structure of year/month/day/hour. The data should be available in S3 within 15 minutes of ingestion. The engineer decides to use AWS Lambda for transformation. Which combination of services should the engineer use to meet these requirements with minimal operational overhead?
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
✓
Use Amazon CloudWatch Events to trigger an AWS Lambda function every 15 minutes. The Lambda function calls the API, transforms the data, and writes individual JSON objects to S3 with the required partition structure.
Using Amazon CloudWatch Events (or EventBridge) to trigger an AWS Lambda function every 15 minutes provides a simple, serverless solution with minimal operational overhead. The Lambda function can call the REST API, transform the array of posts into individual JSON objects, and write them to S3 with the partition structure year/month/day/hour. This meets the 15-minute latency requirement without managing infrastructure. Option A (AWS Step Functions) adds unnecessary orchestration complexity for a simple scheduled task. Option C (AWS Glue ETL) is too heavyweight for this lightweight transformation and incurs additional cost and setup. Option D (Amazon Kinesis Data Firehose) is designed for streaming data, not periodic batch API calls; it cannot pull from an API on a schedule without custom logic, making it less suitable.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✗
Use AWS Step Functions to orchestrate an API call and data transformation with Lambda, running every 15 minutes.
Why it's wrong here
Step Functions adds overhead for simple scheduling.
- ✓
Use Amazon CloudWatch Events to trigger an AWS Lambda function every 15 minutes. The Lambda function calls the API, transforms the data, and writes individual JSON objects to S3 with the required partition structure.
Why this is correct
Simple and cost-effective for periodic API polling.
- ✗
Use AWS Glue ETL jobs scheduled with AWS Glue triggers to run every 15 minutes.
Why it's wrong here
Glue jobs have startup latency and higher cost.
- ✗
Use Amazon Kinesis Data Firehose with a Lambda function for transformation. Configure Firehose to pull from the API every 15 minutes.
Why it's wrong here
Firehose does not support pulling from REST APIs.
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
Related to this question
About these practice questions
This DEA-C01 question is part of Courseiva's 1,711-question bank — original exam-style content with full explanations and wrong-answer analysis, never real exam questions or exam dumps. Learn why practice questions differ from exam dumps →
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.