SAP-C02 Design for New Solutions Practice Question
A company is designing a new data lake on AWS. The data lake will store structured and unstructured data from various sources. The company needs a solution that can automatically catalog the data and make it searchable. Data will be stored in Amazon S3. Which AWS service should be used to catalog and enable search across the data lake?
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 Glue Data Catalog
AWS Glue Data Catalog automatically discovers and catalogs metadata from data stored in Amazon S3, making it searchable. Option A, Amazon Athena, is a serverless query service that uses the Glue Data Catalog but does not itself catalog data. Option B, Amazon EMR, is a big data processing service using frameworks like Spark and Hadoop, not a catalog. Option C, Amazon Redshift Spectrum, allows querying data in S3 from Redshift but does not provide a catalog.
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 Athena
Why it's wrong here
Athena is a query service, it uses a catalog but does not create one.
- ✗
Amazon EMR
Why it's wrong here
EMR is for processing, not cataloging.
- ✗
Amazon Redshift Spectrum
Why it's wrong here
Spectrum queries external data but does not catalog it.
- ✓
AWS Glue Data Catalog
Why this is correct
Glue Data Catalog automatically crawls data sources and stores metadata.
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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