DEA-C01 Data Ingestion and Transformation Practice Question
A data pipeline ingests daily CSV files from an FTP server into an Amazon S3 bucket. The files must be converted to Parquet format and partitioned by date for efficient querying using Amazon Athena. Which AWS service is most suitable for this transformation?
⚠ Common exam trap
It's easy for candidates to confuse AWS Glue with Amazon EMR, thinking EMR is always needed for Parquet conversion, but Glue's serverless ETL is more appropriate for scheduled batch jobs without cluster management 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
✓
AWS Glue
AWS Glue is the most suitable service because it provides a fully managed ETL (Extract, Transform, Load) capability that can natively read CSV files from S3, convert them to Parquet format, and write the output partitioned by date. Glue's built-in transform 'ConvertToParquet' and dynamic frame partitioning make this a straightforward, serverless solution without needing to manage 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.
- ✗
Amazon Kinesis Data Firehose
Why it's wrong here
Kinesis Data Firehose is for real-time streaming, not batch file processing.
- ✗
Amazon EMR
Why it's wrong here
EMR requires managing clusters and is overkill for simple batch transformation.
- ✓
AWS Glue
Why this is correct
Glue provides a serverless Spark environment that can transform CSV to Parquet and partition data efficiently.
- ✗
AWS Lambda
Why it's wrong here
Lambda has time and memory constraints that make it unsuitable for large file conversions.
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.