PDE Designing Data Processing Systems Practice Question
A company needs to process streaming sensor data from millions of devices with sub-second latency, apply transformations, and write results to BigQuery for real-time dashboards. The data volume varies, and they want to avoid managing servers. Which service should they use?
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
✓
Dataflow
Dataflow is a fully managed, serverless stream and batch processing service that can handle high-throughput streaming with sub-second latency.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✗
Cloud Data Fusion
Why it's wrong here
Data Fusion is a visual ETL tool for batch, not real-time streaming.
- ✓
Dataflow
Why this is correct
Dataflow is serverless, supports streaming, and integrates with BigQuery.
- ✗
Dataproc
Why it's wrong here
Dataproc is managed Spark/Hadoop, but requires cluster management and is not serverless for streaming.
- ✗
Dataprep
Why it's wrong here
Dataprep is for visual data wrangling, not streaming processing.
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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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.