DEA-C01 Data Ingestion and Transformation Practice Question
A data engineer is designing a near-real-time streaming pipeline to ingest clickstream data from a web application. The data must be enriched with user metadata from a DynamoDB table before being stored in S3. Which combination of AWS services should the engineer use? (Choose TWO.)
⚠ Common exam trap
A common mix-up: candidates confuse Kinesis Data Firehose's ability to invoke a Lambda for simple transformations with the need for stateful stream enrichment, leading them to select Firehose alone without a stream processing engine.
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 Kinesis Data Analytics for Apache Flink
Amazon Kinesis Data Streams (C) provides the low-latency, durable ingestion layer for the clickstream data, while Amazon Kinesis Data Analytics for Apache Flink (B) allows you to run a Flink application that can perform stream-to-stream joins with the DynamoDB user metadata in near-real time. The enriched output can then be written to S3 via a Kinesis Data Firehose delivery stream or directly from the Flink application.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✗
Amazon Kinesis Data Firehose
Why it's wrong here
Cannot directly enrich from DynamoDB.
- ✓
Amazon Kinesis Data Analytics for Apache Flink
Why this is correct
Performs stream enrichment with DynamoDB lookups.
- ✓
Amazon Kinesis Data Streams
Why this is correct
Ingests high-throughput clickstream data.
- ✗
AWS Lambda with DynamoDB Accelerator (DAX)
Why it's wrong here
Lambda can enrich but DAX is not needed; Lambda concurrency may be a bottleneck.
- ✗
AWS Glue Streaming ETL
Why it's wrong here
Glue streaming is more suited for batch-oriented transformations.
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
One of 1,711 original DEA-C01 practice questions on Courseiva, each with a full explanation and wrong-answer analysis — not exam dumps or protected exam content. 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.