DVA-C02 Development with AWS Services Practice Question
A developer wants to invoke an AWS Lambda function every hour to perform a maintenance task. Which AWS service should be used to schedule the invocation?
⚠ Common exam trap
Candidates often confuse 'scheduling' with 'messaging' and pick SQS or SNS, not realizing that only EventBridge (CloudWatch Events) provides native cron/rate-based triggers for Lambda.
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
✓
Amazon CloudWatch Events (EventBridge)
Amazon CloudWatch Events (now part of Amazon EventBridge) is the correct service for scheduling periodic invocations of AWS Lambda functions. It allows you to create a rule with a cron or rate expression (e.g., `rate(1 hour)`) that triggers the Lambda function on a defined schedule. This is the native, serverless way to run code on a recurring timer without managing any 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 Simple Queue Service (SQS)
Why it's wrong here
Amazon Simple Queue Service (SQS) is a message queuing service designed for decoupling application components and handling asynchronous processing. While SQS can store messages, it does not possess any inherent scheduling capabilities to trigger a Lambda function at a specific time or on a recurring basis. A separate, external service would be required to place messages into the queue on a schedule, which would then be consumed by the Lambda function.
- ✗
AWS Step Functions
Why it's wrong here
AWS Step Functions is a serverless workflow service used for orchestrating complex business processes and coordinating multiple AWS services into state machines. Its primary purpose is to define and manage sequential or parallel steps in a workflow, not to serve as a simple, recurring scheduler for a single Lambda invocation. While a Step Function can incorporate Wait states, it lacks the native cron-like scheduling mechanism that is ideal for periodic, stand-alone function execution.
- ✓
Amazon CloudWatch Events (EventBridge)
Why this is correct
Amazon CloudWatch Events, now largely integrated into Amazon EventBridge, is the definitive AWS service for triggering Lambda functions on a schedule. It enables developers to create rules that define specific time-based patterns, such as cron expressions or fixed-rate intervals, to directly invoke target Lambda functions. This provides a robust, serverless, and highly scalable solution for automating periodic tasks and time-driven events within the AWS ecosystem.
- ✗
Amazon Simple Notification Service (SNS)
Why it's wrong here
Amazon Simple Notification Service (SNS) is a highly available, durable, and secure publish/subscribe messaging service designed for sending messages to a large number of subscribers. SNS immediately delivers notifications when a message is published to a topic, operating on an event-driven model rather than a time-driven one. It does not offer any built-in functionality to schedule the publication of messages or the invocation of target services at predefined intervals.
Quick reference
Cloud Service Model Comparison
| Model | You Manage | Provider Manages | Examples |
|---|---|---|---|
| IaaS | OS, runtime, apps, data | Hardware, hypervisor, networking | EC2, Azure VMs, GCP Compute Engine |
| PaaS | Apps and data | OS, runtime, middleware, hardware | Elastic Beanstalk, Azure App Service |
| SaaS | Data and settings only | Everything else | Microsoft 365, Salesforce, Workday |
| FaaS / Serverless | Function code only | Infra, scaling, runtime | Lambda, Azure Functions, Cloud Run |
| CaaS | Containers and apps | Kubernetes, OS, hardware | EKS, AKS, GKE |
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Written by Johnson Ajibi, MSc IT Security
Senior Network & Security Engineer · founder of Courseiva
This DVA-C02 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 DVA-C02 exam.