MLS-C01 Data Engineering Practice Question
A data pipeline uses AWS Glue to transform data from Amazon RDS to Amazon S3. The team wants to ensure that only new or updated records are processed in each run, minimizing cost and time. Which AWS Glue feature should be used?
⚠ Common exam trap
Candidates often confuse scheduling (triggers) or schema discovery (crawlers) with stateful incremental processing, leading candidates to overlook the bookmark mechanism that specifically tracks record-level changes.
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
✓
Enable Glue Job Bookmarks.
Glue Job Bookmarks track processed data and persist state between job runs, enabling incremental processing of new or updated records from a source like Amazon RDS. This minimizes cost and time by avoiding full table scans and reprocessing unchanged data.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✗
Use Glue triggers to run the job on a schedule.
Why it's wrong here
Triggers automate job runs but do not track what was processed.
- ✗
Use Glue partition pruning to filter data.
Why it's wrong here
Partition pruning reduces scanned data but does not track processed records.
- ✗
Use Glue crawlers to detect new data.
Why it's wrong here
Crawlers update the Data Catalog but do not process data incrementally.
- ✓
Enable Glue Job Bookmarks.
Why this is correct
Job Bookmarks maintain state and process only new or changed data.
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
Related to this question
About these practice questions
Courseiva writes every MLS-C01 question from scratch — 1,672 in total, each with an explanation and a wrong-answer breakdown. None are copied from real exams or dumps. Learn why practice questions differ from exam dumps →
JA
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.