DEA-C01 Data Ingestion and Transformation Practice Question
Which TWO AWS services can be used to transform data in an Amazon S3 data lake before loading into Amazon Redshift? (Choose 2.)
⚠ Common exam trap
It's easy for candidates to confuse Amazon Athena's querying capability with ETL functionality, or assume AWS Lambda can handle large-scale data transformations, when in fact AWS Glue is the correct managed ETL service for transforming data in S3 before loading into Redshift.
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 (Option D) is correct because it provides a fully managed ETL service that can crawl, catalog, and transform data in Amazon S3 data lakes. With AWS Glue, you can create ETL jobs using a serverless Spark environment to transform raw data into optimized formats (e.g., Parquet) and load it into Amazon Redshift via JDBC connections, making it ideal for preparing data before ingestion.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✗
AWS Lambda
Why it's wrong here
Lambda is suitable for lightweight transformations, not for large-scale ETL.
- ✗
Amazon Athena
Why it's wrong here
Athena queries S3 but does not load data into Redshift.
- ✗
Amazon EMR
Why it's wrong here
EMR can transform data but requires cluster management.
- ✓
AWS Glue
Why this is correct
Glue can transform data in S3 and load into Redshift.
- ✓
Amazon Redshift Spectrum
Why this is correct
Spectrum can query S3 and insert results into Redshift tables.
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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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.