DEA-C01 Data Ingestion and Transformation Practice Question
A data engineer needs to ingest data from an Amazon RDS MySQL database into a data lake on Amazon S3. The engineer wants to perform an initial full load and then capture incremental changes. Which TWO AWS services can be combined to achieve this?
⚠ Common exam trap
It's easy for candidates to assume Amazon S3 is only a storage service and not a correct answer, but the question asks for services that can be combined, and S3 is the required target for the data lake, making it a valid choice alongside DMS.
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 S3
Amazon S3 is the target data lake storage layer, not a service that performs data ingestion or change data capture. However, it is listed as a correct option because the question asks which services can be combined to achieve the goal, and S3 is the essential destination for the data lake. The actual ingestion and CDC are handled by AWS DMS, which writes full load and incremental changes directly to S3 in formats like Parquet or CSV.
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
Firehose cannot connect to MySQL directly.
- ✗
AWS Glue
Why it's wrong here
Glue can do batch loads but not CDC from MySQL.
- ✓
Amazon S3
Why this is correct
S3 is the target for the data lake.
- ✓
AWS Database Migration Service (DMS)
Why this is correct
DMS supports full load and CDC from MySQL to S3.
- ✗
AWS Data Pipeline
Why it's wrong here
Data Pipeline can copy data but not CDC.
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.