PDE Designing Data Processing Systems Practice Question

An engineer needs to create a Pub/Sub subscription that sends messages to an HTTPS endpoint. The endpoint must be able to acknowledge messages individually. Which type of subscription 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

✓

Push subscription

Push subscriptions deliver messages to a configured HTTPS endpoint. The endpoint can acknowledge by returning a 200 status.

Answer analysis

Option-by-option breakdown

For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.

✗
Pull subscription
Why it's wrong here
Pull subscriptions require the subscriber to poll and acknowledge via the Pub/Sub API, so they cannot push messages to an HTTPS endpoint. They suit custom consumers controlling their own retrieval rate, not webhook delivery requiring per-message acknowledgement.
✓
Push subscription
Why this is correct
Push subscriptions deliver messages to an HTTPS endpoint and let the endpoint return an HTTP success code per message, which acknowledges that individual message. This satisfies the requirement for individual acknowledgement without the subscriber pulling.
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BigQuery subscription
Why it's wrong here
A BigQuery subscription writes messages into a BigQuery table, so it cannot deliver to an HTTPS endpoint or return per-message acknowledgements. It is tempting because it is a genuine Pub/Sub subscription type, and it would be the right choice when the requirement is streaming messages directly into BigQuery for analytics rather than calling a webhook.
✗
Cloud Storage subscription
Why it's wrong here
Cloud Storage subscriptions write messages directly into a Cloud Storage bucket; they never invoke an HTTPS endpoint and provide no per-message acknowledgement mechanism. They suit archival or later batch processing of message payloads, not webhook delivery.

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