SAP-C02 Design for New Solutions Practice Question
A company is designing a data lake on AWS using Amazon S3 as the storage layer. The data lake will ingest data from multiple sources, including streaming data from Amazon Kinesis Data Streams and batch data from on-premises systems via AWS Snowball. The company needs to catalog the data and make it available for querying with Amazon Athena and Amazon Redshift Spectrum. Which combination of services should the company use to meet these requirements?
⚠ Common exam trap
It's easy for candidates to assume Lake Formation (Option B) is the primary catalog service, but it actually uses the Glue Data Catalog as its foundation, and the question requires ETL capabilities that Lake Formation does not natively provide.
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
✓
Use AWS Glue to create a data catalog and run ETL jobs for both streaming and batch data.
AWS Glue provides a fully managed data catalog that integrates with Amazon Athena and Amazon Redshift Spectrum, making it the central metadata repository for the data lake. It can run ETL jobs for both streaming data (via Glue Streaming ETL) and batch data (via Glue Crawlers and Jobs), satisfying the requirement to catalog and prepare data from Kinesis Data Streams and Snowball. This combination directly meets the need for a unified catalog and query readiness.
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 AWS Glue to create a data catalog and run ETL jobs for both streaming and batch data.
Why this is correct
Glue provides a data catalog and ETL capabilities.
- ✗
Use AWS Lake Formation to set up the data lake and use its built-in catalog.
Why it's wrong here
Lake Formation uses Glue catalog, but the question asks for a combination.
- ✗
Use Amazon Athena to create tables and partitions directly from S3.
Why it's wrong here
Athena can query data but does not provide a managed catalog.
- ✗
Use Amazon Kinesis Data Firehose to deliver streaming data to S3 and catalog with Athena.
Why it's wrong here
Firehose does not catalog 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 |
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Written by Johnson Ajibi, MSc IT Security
Senior Network & Security Engineer · founder of Courseiva
This SAP-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 SAP-C02 exam.