DEA-C01 Data Ingestion and Transformation Practice Question
A data engineer needs to ingest JSON files from an S3 bucket into a DynamoDB table. The files are updated hourly and contain new records. Which AWS service should be used to trigger a Lambda function for each new object?
⚠ Common exam trap
Watch out — candidates often confuse Amazon EventBridge with S3 Event Notifications, but EventBridge is not the native S3 event trigger—S3 Event Notifications are the direct, service-integrated mechanism for invoking Lambda on object creation.
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
✓
S3 Event Notifications
S3 Event Notifications are the correct choice because they are designed to trigger AWS Lambda functions directly in response to object creation events (e.g., `s3:ObjectCreated:*`) in an S3 bucket. This allows the data engineer to automatically invoke a Lambda function for each new JSON file as it is uploaded, enabling ingestion into DynamoDB without polling or additional infrastructure.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✗
Kinesis Data Firehose
Why it's wrong here
Firehose ingests streaming data, not event-driven from S3.
- ✗
Amazon EventBridge
Why it's wrong here
Amazon EventBridge is not the optimal choice because it does not natively integrate with S3 object creation events to trigger Lambda functions directly. While EventBridge is excellent for routing events between AWS services and custom applications based on defined rules, it typically relies on other services to publish events to it. It would be tempting because EventBridge is a powerful event bus for decoupling services and reacting to a wide range of events, making it suitable for complex event-driven architectures where S3 events might be published to EventBridge by another service like S3 Event Notifications.
- ✓
S3 Event Notifications
Why this is correct
S3 can send events to Lambda on object creation.
- ✗
Amazon SQS
Why it's wrong here
SQS requires a producer to send messages; S3 can send to SQS but not directly invoke Lambda.
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
Courseiva writes every DEA-C01 question from scratch — 1,711 in total, each with an explanation and a wrong-answer breakdown. None are copied from real exams or 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.