SAP-C02 Practice Question: Accelerate Workload Migration and Modernization
A company is migrating a legacy application to AWS and needs to decouple the application components. The application currently uses a monolithic architecture with direct calls between components. Which AWS services can help decouple the components? (Choose THREE.)
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 Simple Queue Service (SQS)
Amazon SQS (A) is correct because it provides a fully managed message queue that lets producers and consumers communicate asynchronously, removing direct component-to-component calls and buffering messages for reliable decoupling. Amazon SNS (B) is correct because it implements the publish/subscribe pattern, allowing a publisher to fan out notifications to multiple subscribers without knowing or directly invoking them, which breaks tight coupling. Amazon EventBridge (E) is correct because it is a serverless event bus that routes events from producers to consumers based on rules, enabling event-driven decoupling between otherwise independent components. AWS Step Functions (C) is a workflow orchestration service that coordinates components but still invokes them in a defined sequence, so it does not by itself decouple them. Amazon Kinesis Data Streams (D) is a real-time streaming service for ingesting and processing high-volume data, not a general-purpose application decoupling mechanism in this scenario.
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 Simple Queue Service (SQS)
Why this is correct
Amazon SQS decouples components by providing a durable, fully managed message queue that buffers asynchronous communication, so producers and consumers no longer call each other directly. This directly satisfies the stem's requirement to break the monolithic application's direct component-to-component calls, absorbing traffic spikes and tolerating consumer failures without losing messages.
- ✓
Amazon Simple Notification Service (SNS)
Why this is correct
Amazon SNS decouples components through the publish/subscribe pattern: producers publish messages to a topic, which pushes them to multiple subscribed endpoints asynchronously. This removes the direct component-to-component calls the monolithic application relies on, satisfying the decoupling requirement without the publisher knowing subscribers.
- ✗
AWS Step Functions
Why it's wrong here
Step Functions orchestrates and coordinates workflows between components; it does not provide the durable, buffered message or event transport that removes direct synchronous calls. It suits coordinating multi-step business processes, not acting as the decoupling channel between services.
- ✗
Amazon Kinesis Data Streams
Why it's wrong here
Kinesis Data Streams ingests and buffers high-volume streaming data for analytics consumers; it is not a general-purpose application messaging or queueing layer for decoupling arbitrary components. It fits real-time data pipelines, not replacing direct service-to-service calls in a monolith.
- ✓
Amazon EventBridge
Why this is correct
Amazon EventBridge provides an event bus that routes events between producers and consumers asynchronously, removing direct synchronous calls between monolith components. Publishing domain events to EventBridge lets each component subscribe independently, satisfying the decoupling requirement without point-to-point integration.
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 |
Go deeper
Related to this question
About these practice questions
This SAP-C02 question is part of Courseiva's 984-question bank — original exam-style content with full explanations and wrong-answer analysis, never real exam questions or exam 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 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.