MLS-C01 Data Engineering Practice Question
Which TWO AWS services can be used to schedule and orchestrate a data pipeline that includes multiple steps such as data extraction, transformation, and loading? (Choose 2.)
⚠ Common exam trap
Candidates often confuse AWS Glue's built-in job triggers and crawlers as sufficient for orchestration, but Glue lacks native DAG-based workflow management with conditional logic and dependency resolution, which is why MWAA and Step Functions are the correct choices for multi-step pipeline orchestration.
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 Managed Workflows for Apache Airflow (MWAA)
Amazon Managed Workflows for Apache Airflow (MWAA) and AWS Step Functions are both designed for orchestrating multi-step workflows, including data pipelines with extraction, transformation, and loading (ETL) steps. MWAA provides managed Apache Airflow, allowing you to define complex workflows as Directed Acyclic Graphs (DAGs) with scheduling, dependency management, and monitoring. Step Functions offers state machines with visual workflow design, conditional logic, error handling, and integration with over 200 AWS services. In contrast, AWS Lambda is ideal for serverless function execution but not for orchestrating multi-step processes with dependencies; AWS Glue is primarily an ETL service with basic job triggers and crawlers, lacking native DAG-based orchestration with conditions; Amazon CloudWatch Events (now Amazon EventBridge) is for event-driven scheduling and does not support complex workflow orchestration with multiple steps and dependencies.
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 a compute service, not designed for multi-step orchestration.
- ✗
AWS Glue
Why it's wrong here
Glue is for ETL, not orchestration, though it can be a step in a pipeline.
- ✓
Amazon Managed Workflows for Apache Airflow (MWAA)
Why this is correct
MWAA is a managed orchestration service for data pipelines.
- ✓
AWS Step Functions
Why this is correct
Step Functions orchestrates multiple AWS services.
- ✗
Amazon CloudWatch Events
Why it's wrong here
CloudWatch Events triggers based on time or events, not complex workflows.
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 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.