MLS-C01 Data Engineering Practice Question
A data engineer needs to set up a data pipeline that ingests data from an Amazon RDS MySQL database into Amazon S3. The pipeline should run daily and capture incremental changes (inserts, updates, deletes) from the source database. Which AWS service should be used as the data ingestion tool?
⚠ Common exam trap
Many exam-takers confuse AWS Glue crawlers or Data Pipeline SQL activities with CDC capabilities, but neither service natively captures incremental database changes from MySQL binlogs, which is the core requirement for this scenario.
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 Database Migration Service (DMS) with continuous change data capture (CDC).
AWS DMS with continuous CDC is the correct choice because it is specifically designed to capture incremental changes (inserts, updates, deletes) from a relational database like Amazon RDS MySQL and replicate them to Amazon S3. DMS uses the MySQL binary log (binlog) to track row-level changes in near real-time, making it ideal for daily incremental pipelines. Other services either lack native CDC support or are not optimized for database-to-object-store incremental 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 Database Migration Service (DMS) with continuous change data capture (CDC).
Why this is correct
Correct: DMS with CDC can capture incremental changes.
- ✗
Amazon Kinesis Data Streams with a Lambda function.
Why it's wrong here
Incorrect: Kinesis is for streaming data, not for pulling from RDS.
- ✗
AWS Data Pipeline with a SQL activity.
Why it's wrong here
Incorrect: Data Pipeline is not designed for CDC.
- ✗
AWS Glue with a scheduled crawler.
Why it's wrong here
Incorrect: Glue crawlers catalog data, they do not perform CDC.
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 MLS-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 MLS-C01 exam.