DEA-C01 Data Ingestion and Transformation Practice Question
Network Topology
Refer to the exhibit. A data engineer runs an AWS Glue ETL job that writes output to an S3 bucket. The job fails with the error shown. What is the most likely cause?
⚠ Common exam trap
The trap here is that candidates may focus on the data format or bucket existence, but the error message explicitly points to an access permission issue, which is a common misconfiguration in IAM roles for Glue jobs.
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
✓
The IAM role used by the Glue job lacks the s3:PutObject permission for the output bucket
The error shown in the exhibit indicates an access denied or permission failure when the AWS Glue ETL job attempts to write its output to the S3 bucket. The most likely cause is that the IAM role assigned to the Glue job does not include the s3:PutObject permission for the target bucket, which is required to upload objects. Without this permission, the job cannot complete the write operation, resulting in the failure.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✓
The IAM role used by the Glue job lacks the s3:PutObject permission for the output bucket
Why this is correct
Glue assumes the job's IAM role to write output, so a missing s3:PutObject permission on the target bucket produces an access-denied failure at the write stage. Granting that action to the role resolves it, satisfying the stem's constraint of the S3 write error shown in the exhibit.
- ✗
The Glue job attempted to write data in an unsupported format
Why it's wrong here
Glue's DynamicFrame writers support Parquet, ORC, JSON, CSV, Avro and XML, so an unsupported-format error would name the format rather than the exhibited message. It tempts because format mismatches do cause write failures, and converting the output to a supported format would resolve those cases.
- ✗
The S3 bucket does not exist
Why it's wrong here
A missing bucket yields a distinct NoSuchBucket error, and Glue validates the target path before the write stage, so this cannot match the exhibited message. It tempts because typos in s3:// paths are a common cause of job failures, and creating the bucket first would be the fix in that scenario.
- ✗
The output file name contains invalid characters
Why it's wrong here
S3 object keys accept virtually any UTF-8 character, so a filename with unusual characters would not produce the exhibited failure; Glue writes keys verbatim. This distracts because filename sanitisation matters when downstream tools reject special characters, but that is a consumer-side parsing concern, not an S3 write error.
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 |
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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.