hardMultiple Select
PDE Practice Question: A company building a real-time analytics pipeline…
A company building a real-time analytics pipeline with Pub/Sub and Dataflow. Which THREE best practices should they follow?
⚠ Common exam trap
Google Cloud often tests the misconception that exactly-once processing must be applied uniformly across all pipeline transforms, when in practice it is only required at sinks and can be replaced by at-least-once with deduplication for better performance.
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 event time processing with watermarks and allowed lateness
In streaming pipelines, event time processing with watermarks and allowed lateness is essential for handling out-of-order data. Watermarks track the progress of event time, and allowed lateness specifies how long to wait for late-arriving data before considering it as late, ensuring accurate windowed aggregations.
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 event time processing with watermarks and allowed lateness
Why this is correct
Event time processing supports out-of-order data and ensures accurate windowing.
- ✓
Design idempotent sinks to handle duplicate outputs
Why this is correct
Idempotent sinks allow safe replay of data, ensuring correctness.
- ✗
Use exactly-once processing for all transforms
Why it's wrong here
Dataflow provides at-least-once by default; exactly-once requires sinks that support idempotency.
- ✓
Use at-least-once delivery with deduplication in the pipeline
Why this is correct
At-least-once combined with deduplication provides practical exactly-once semantics.
- ✗
Use event time processing only for batch pipelines
Why it's wrong here
Event time is also useful in streaming pipelines.
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This PDE practice question is part of Courseiva's free Google Cloud 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 PDE exam.