AWS Data Engineer Associate (DEA-C01) - Full Practice Exam 1

1. A business application needs frequent small transactional updates and constraints on operational records. A reporting workload needs large aggregations across historical data. Which high-level division is most appropriate?
2. A company must populate an S3 data lake from an existing supported relational database and then continue ingesting inserts, updates, and deletes with minimal application interruption. Which DMS task type best matches this requirement?
3. A company needs audit objects in S3 to resist deletion and shortening of their protected retention period, including by privileged account users. Which S3 feature and mode should it evaluate for the documented retention policy?
4. A company requires data-lake clients to use TLS when accessing S3. It wants a bucket-level enforcement control while accounting for applicable AWS service access. Which policy approach should it evaluate?
5. A company wants scheduled transfers from a supported SaaS application into S3, with field mapping and managed connection configuration. It prefers not to maintain a custom connector for the supported source. Which AWS service is the most direct fit?
6. A COPY on the main provisioned Redshift cluster fails after a supplier changes a field format. Operations needs the offending source file, row, and parsing details before deciding on a correction. Which first step is most appropriate?
7. A curated orders table must have a non-null order_id and nonnegative total. A batch should not become visible as approved data when critical rules fail. Which practices meet the requirement? Select 2 answers.
8. A daily pipeline exits successfully, but a dashboard shows data from three days ago because the source has not delivered recent records. Which quality check most directly detects this condition?
9. A data lake needs supported SQL updates and deletes, transactionally consistent table changes, and snapshot-based table behavior over S3 data. Which option is the most direct fit when using supported Athena functionality?
10. A data pipeline loads a large daily dataset from S3 into Amazon Redshift. It currently issues one INSERT for every row, causing long load times. Which loading approach should the engineer evaluate?
11. A data platform adds many tables each month. Finance analysts should receive access when tables are classified with approved business-domain and sensitivity tags. The team wants permissions that follow this classification rather than individual grants for every new table. Which actions are appropriate? Select 2 answers.
12. A data-quality review samples only the most recent successful files from one source. The pipeline also processes older files and several other sources with different formats. Which change improves the assessment?
13. A data team already maintains Apache Airflow DAGs with dependencies, retries, and scheduled backfills. It wants to run them on a managed AWS service without operating the Airflow scheduler infrastructure itself. Which service best fits?
14. A dataset may be stored only in approved AWS Regions. A team proposes cross-Region replication and disaster-recovery backups. Which review is necessary before enabling those features?
15. A device platform needs all readings for one device between two timestamps. A proposed DynamoDB model uses the same partition key for every reading and a random sort key. Which model better fits the primary query?
16. A DMS CDC task falls behind. Source capture latency stays low, but target latency grows and the target reports write throttling. Which investigation is best supported by this evidence?
17. A downstream store receives replayed CDC events and can receive older events after a newer change for the same source row. It must preserve the latest source state and handle source deletes. Which processing behaviors are required? Select 2 answers.
18. A financial report changes unexpectedly after an upstream data correction. Engineers need to identify which source versions and transformation runs produced the affected table partitions. Which information is most useful?
19. A Glue crawler discovers an S3 dataset and creates a table in the Glue Data Catalog. A stakeholder assumes the data has now been copied into the catalog. Which explanation is correct?
20. A Glue job must read a database in private VPC subnets. The database should remain inaccessible from the public internet. Which configuration is appropriate?
21. A Glue job role has s3:GetObject permission for its input prefix. Reads fail with AccessDenied because the objects use a customer managed KMS key. No explicit denies apply. Which authorization checks are required? Select 2 answers.
22. A Glue pipeline connects to a relational source using a password embedded in job arguments and repository files. The team needs controlled secret retrieval and an appropriate rotation workflow. Which approach is best?
23. A Glue Spark job joins a multi-terabyte fact dataset with a small dimension table that comfortably fits in executor memory. The current shuffle join moves large amounts of data across the cluster. Which optimization should the engineer evaluate first?
24. A Glue Spark job reads a large dataset successfully, then the driver runs out of memory when the code collects all rows locally to calculate an aggregate. Executor tasks are otherwise balanced. Which change should the engineer make first?
25. A high-volume S3 ingestion workload uses SSE-KMS and produces many objects. The team wants to reduce applicable KMS request costs without removing KMS-backed encryption. Which feature should it evaluate?
26. A JSON ingestion pipeline receives some records with missing required identifiers or invalid numeric fields. Valid records should continue through processing, but rejected records must remain available for correction and replay. Which approach is best?
27. A Kinesis consumer remains running without errors, but its output is increasingly stale. The team wants an alarm that reflects how far consumer processing has fallen behind the latest available records. Which signal is the most direct fit?
28. A Kinesis Data Streams producer writes events for thousands of devices. Every record uses the partition key telemetry, and writes are throttled even though other shards have capacity. Events must remain ordered per device, not globally. Which change best addresses the bottleneck?
29. A Kinesis stream retains records for 24 hours. A downstream outage may last 48 hours, and consumers must replay the missed events after recovery. Which operational change is necessary before such an outage?
30. A lake contains millions of tiny S3 objects. A proposed lifecycle policy transitions each object after a few days to reduce storage cost. Which assessment is most important before applying the policy?
31. A Lambda function processes Kinesis batches. Most records succeed, but one record repeatedly fails. The team wants supported partial-batch reporting and wants repeated delivery to avoid duplicate downstream effects. Which actions are appropriate? Select 2 answers.
32. A large Redshift fact table is queried primarily by narrow event_date ranges. The date distribution and workload are stable, and scans read many unnecessary blocks. Which physical design should be evaluated?
33. A partner API returns a continuation token and sometimes responds with HTTP 429 and Retry-After. A daily ingestion job must retrieve the complete authorized dataset and resume interrupted runs. Which behaviors should the client implement? Select 2 answers.
34. A pipeline needs recent event replay for consumers and seven years of queryable historical retention at an appropriate cost. Which design principles should it apply? Select 2 answers.
35. A pipeline revision changes a field type and transformation logic used by downstream consumers. The team wants to reduce regressions before replacing the production version. Which process best fits?
36. A producer account owns a Lake Formation-governed dataset. A consumer account needs authorized analytical access without maintaining a separate full data copy. Which approach should the engineers implement?
37. A producer sends JSON records to Amazon Data Firehose for delivery to S3. Analysts want Parquet files and can tolerate delivery buffering. Which managed feature most directly meets the requirement?
38. A raw S3 landing zone may contain personal information in newly delivered files. The platform team needs managed discovery findings to inform classification and access decisions. Which service is the most direct fit?
39. A Redshift dashboard repeatedly runs the same expensive aggregate over a large table. The business accepts a defined refresh delay instead of recalculating from the base data for every request. Which feature should the engineer evaluate?
40. A scheduled Glue job reads newly arrived S3 objects and writes transformed data to a target. The team wants Glue bookmarks to track processed source data. Which statement correctly describes their role?
41. A staging table contains several versions per order_id. Each version has updated_at and a unique increasing source_sequence. The target needs exactly the newest row per order, including deterministic handling of timestamp ties. Which SQL approach is appropriate?
42. A Step Functions Standard workflow must start a Glue job, wait until the job finishes, and start a dependent task only after success. The team wants the managed integration rather than a custom polling loop. Which integration pattern should it use?
43. A Step Functions task writes a batch to a downstream system. The write can succeed even if the response is lost, causing the task to time out. Which controls make a retry safer? Select 2 answers.
44. A stream-processing job calculates five-minute activity totals. Mobile clients can upload events several minutes late. Totals must follow the event timestamp rather than the server arrival time. Which design is most appropriate?
45. A team needs a large point-in-time DynamoDB dataset in S3 for analytics. The table has point-in-time recovery enabled, and the team wants to avoid consuming read capacity on the live table with a full scan. Which feature best fits?
46. A team uses Amazon S3 Tables with Apache Iceberg and wants to reduce operational work for compacting files and managing old table snapshots and unreferenced files. Which capability should it evaluate?
47. A versioned S3 bucket stores raw source data. Operations needs both recovery from an accidental delete and a separate process for permanent removal when approved retention permits it. Which statements are correct? Select 2 answers.
48. After a large load and many deletes, a Redshift table shows poor query plans and substantial reclaimable space. Automatic maintenance has not resolved the issue within the required window. Which statement best distinguishes the manual maintenance operations to evaluate?
49. An application uses DynamoDB TTL for temporary processing records. A record expiration timestamp has passed, but the item still appears in a query. How should the application handle this behavior?
50. An Athena table uses predictable daily S3 prefixes. New date partitions arrive frequently, and maintaining individual partition entries is becoming expensive. The query patterns include partition predicates. Which feature can calculate partition locations from configured rules?
51. An audit trail records bucket configuration changes but does not show which principal read sensitive input objects. The team needs future GetObject audit events for one restricted prefix while limiting unrelated event volume. Which change is required?
52. An Aurora PostgreSQL application uses supported pgvector functionality to search a large collection of embeddings by similarity. Exact full scans are too slow, and the team accepts an evaluated approximation tradeoff. Which approach should it investigate?
53. An engineer configures AWS DMS CDC from a supported PostgreSQL source. Network access is available, but the task cannot obtain the required logical change stream. Which source-side preparations should the engineer verify? Select 2 answers.
54. An orders table is keyed by order_id. A new access pattern needs recent orders for one customer and should return status and total directly from the index. Which design choices meet the requirement? Select 2 answers.
55. An S3-backed analytical dataset contains millions of tiny Parquet files. Queries spend substantial time listing and opening files despite selecting modest data volumes. Which remediation should the team evaluate?
56. An S3 event triggers a pipeline that appends rows to a target. Duplicate notifications occasionally create duplicate loads. The bucket uses versioning, and each object version should be processed once at the business level. Which design changes are appropriate? Select 2 answers.
57. Analysts query a Lake Formation-governed table through a supported integrated engine. They may see only approved columns and rows for their business unit. The team wants governed access rather than publishing an unrestricted duplicate. Which feature should it evaluate?
58. Analysts query a large S3 dataset in Athena, usually filtering by event date and selecting only a few columns. The data is stored as unpartitioned CSV. Which redesign most directly reduces unnecessary scanning?
59. Analysts use Redshift for recent curated data but occasionally join it with years of historical Parquet in S3. They want to query supported external tables without loading all historical files into local warehouse storage. Which capability fits?
60. Most tasks in a Spark join finish quickly, but one reducer runs much longer and spills heavily. A single customer key accounts for a large fraction of input rows. Which diagnosis and mitigation best fit the evidence?
61. Operations must reprocess historical partitions for one corrected transformation. Normal daily ingestion will continue. Which practices support a safe and repeatable backfill? Select 2 answers.
62. Several independent Kinesis consumers read the same stream and compete for shared GetRecords read throughput. Each consumer needs low-latency access to the complete event stream without dividing records among applications. Which feature is the most direct fit?
63. Several producers publish versioned events consumed by independently deployed applications. The team wants a central schema registry and compatibility validation to reduce accidental breaking changes. Which AWS capability is designed for this purpose?
64. Several teams share Athena. Operations needs separate query settings, query metrics, and a mechanism to stop individual queries that scan beyond an approved data limit. Which feature should it configure?
65. Two large Redshift tables are frequently joined on customer_id. The join key has a well-distributed population, and the workload analysis shows network redistribution is a major cost. Which distribution approach should the engineer evaluate?

Comments — 0