DEA-C01 Data Ingestion and Transformation Practice Question
A financial services company is ingesting trade data from multiple exchanges via Amazon Kinesis Data Streams. Each shard receives data from multiple exchanges, and a consumer application (using KCL) processes the data. The company needs to ensure that trades from the same exchange are processed in order. However, the current implementation distributes records to shards using a random partition key, causing trades from the same exchange to be spread across shards and processed out of order. The team must enforce ordering per exchange without significantly reducing throughput. What should the team do?
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 the exchange ID as the partition key when putting records into the stream.
Using the exchange ID as the partition key ensures all trades from the same exchange go to the same shard, preserving order. Option A is wrong because increasing shard count would further spread data and break ordering. Option B is wrong because using a single shard would preserve order but reduce throughput due to shard limits. Option D is wrong because implementing a custom sequencer is complex and unnecessary.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✗
Implement a custom sequence number in the application to reorder after processing.
Why it's wrong here
Adds complexity and latency; not a standard solution.
- ✗
Use a single shard for all data to guarantee order.
Why it's wrong here
Would limit throughput to 1 MB/s write and 2 MB/s read.
- ✓
Use the exchange ID as the partition key when putting records into the stream.
Why this is correct
Ensures same exchange goes to same shard, preserving order.
- ✗
Increase the number of shards to 10 per exchange.
Why it's wrong here
Would spread exchange data across shards, breaking ordering.
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Same concept, more angles
1 more way this is tested on DEA-C01
These questions test the same concept from different angles. Work through them to make sure you can recognise it however the exam phrases it.
Variation 1. A company is ingesting streaming data from social media feeds using Amazon Kinesis Data Streams. The data is consumed by multiple applications: one for real-time sentiment analysis and another for archival to S3. The data must be processed in order for each social media post. Which TWO approaches meet the requirements? (Choose TWO.)
hard- A.Use Amazon Kinesis Data Firehose to buffer and deliver to S3
- B.Use Amazon SQS FIFO queues between the stream and consumers
- ✓ C.Use a single shard in the Kinesis Data Streams and have all consumers read from that shard
- ✓ D.Use a partition key that ensures related records go to the same shard
- E.Use multiple shards and assign each consumer to a specific shard
Why C: Using a single shard ensures that all records are processed in the exact order they are ingested, as Kinesis Data Streams guarantees ordering within a shard. Since both consumers (real-time sentiment analysis and archival to S3) read from the same shard, they will each receive records in the same sequence, meeting the requirement for ordered processing of each social media post.
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.