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PDE Practice Question: Your company is building a real-time fraud…
Your company is building a real-time fraud detection system using Google Cloud. Transactions are streamed into Pub/Sub, and you need to process them with low latency (under 100ms per event) and aggregate data over sliding windows. Which Google Cloud service is best suited for this processing logic?
⚠ Common exam trap
Google Cloud often tests the misconception that BigQuery streaming inserts can handle real-time per-event processing, but candidates overlook that scheduled queries add latency and BigQuery is not designed for stateful per-event aggregations with sliding windows.
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 the best choice because it provides a unified stream and batch processing model with native support for Pub/Sub, exactly-once semantics, and low-latency sliding window aggregations. Its autoscaling and millisecond-level checkpointing enable sub-100ms per event processing, which is critical for real-time fraud detection.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✓
Dataflow
Why this is correct
Dataflow provides exactly-once, low-latency stream processing with native sliding window support.
- ✗
BigQuery streaming inserts with scheduled queries
Why it's wrong here
BigQuery streaming is for ingestion; scheduled queries are batch-oriented and introduce latency.
- ✗
Dataproc with Spark Streaming
Why it's wrong here
Dataproc is primarily for batch and requires cluster management; Spark Streaming may not meet sub-100ms latency.
- ✗
Cloud Functions
Why it's wrong here
Cloud Functions is stateless and not designed for stateful windowed aggregation.
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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.