PDE Ingesting and Processing the Data Practice Question
You need to stream real-time user click events from your application into BigQuery for immediate analysis. The events must be available for query within seconds. Which approach is recommended?
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 Pub/Sub to Dataflow to BigQuery with the Storage Write API for high-throughput streaming.
Pub/Sub to Dataflow to BigQuery using the Storage Write API provides the highest throughput and reliability with near-real-time latency. Legacy streaming inserts are limited and have higher latency. Direct Pub/Sub to BigQuery subscription is not a native feature. Cloud Functions is not suitable for high-throughput streaming.
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 Pub/Sub to Dataflow to BigQuery with the Storage Write API for high-throughput streaming.
Why this is correct
This is the recommended architecture: Pub/Sub for ingestion, Dataflow for stream processing, and Storage Write API for low-latency streaming writes.
- ✗
Use Cloud Data Fusion to ingest streaming data from Pub/Sub into BigQuery.
Why it's wrong here
Cloud Data Fusion is primarily for batch ETL, not real-time streaming.
- ✗
Use Cloud Functions to receive events from Pub/Sub and insert them into BigQuery using the legacy streaming API.
Why it's wrong here
Cloud Functions has scaling limits and is not ideal for high-throughput streaming. Legacy streaming inserts also have limitations.
- ✗
Use Pub/Sub with a BigQuery subscription to directly write events into BigQuery.
Why it's wrong here
Pub/Sub does not have a BigQuery subscription; it can push to a Cloud Function or Dataflow.
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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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.