PDE Ingesting and Processing the Data Practice Question
A data engineer needs to ingest on-premises Oracle CDC data into BigQuery in near real-time with minimal operational overhead. Which service should they use?
⚠ Common exam trap
Google often tests the distinction between batch migration tools (Storage Transfer Service, Transfer Appliance) and streaming CDC services (Datastream), leading candidates to choose a batch option when the question explicitly requires near-real-time ingestion.
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
✓
Datastream
Datastream is purpose-built for streaming change data capture (CDC) from Oracle and other sources into BigQuery with near-real-time latency and minimal operational overhead. It handles schema propagation, checkpointing, and automatic retries, eliminating the need to manage custom ingestion pipelines.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✗
Pub/Sub + Dataflow
Why it's wrong here
This combination is possible but requires building a custom pipeline to handle CDC, increasing operational overhead.
- ✗
Storage Transfer Service
Why it's wrong here
Storage Transfer Service is for batch file transfers between cloud storage systems, not for real-time CDC from databases.
- ✗
Transfer Appliance
Why it's wrong here
Transfer Appliance is for offline, petabyte-scale data transfers, not for ongoing CDC streaming.
- ✓
Datastream
Why this is correct
Datastream is purpose-built for serverless CDC from databases to Google Cloud destinations like BigQuery and GCS.
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Written by Johnson Ajibi, MSc IT Security
Senior Network & Security Engineer · founder of Courseiva
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.