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AWS Certified Data Engineer – Associate DEA-C01 Practice Questions

1040 exam-accurate questions with explanations

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Showing 10 of 1040 questions. Get full access to all questions, detailed explanations, and study materials.

1
Content Domain 1: Data Ingestion and Transformation

An energy provider is redesigning a data pipeline. It wants an operations email list and a chat integration to receive a pipeline-failure alert. The design should avoid unnecessary custom infrastructure. Choose the most appropriate AWS-native option. What should the data engineer do?

A Create an Athena view for the alert.
B Publish the alert to an Amazon SNS topic with the required subscriptions. check_circle
C Store the alert in DynamoDB TTL records only.
D Use an S3 multipart upload as the notification mechanism.
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Explanation

Reasoning: SNS topics fan out notifications to subscribed endpoints. Avoid this mistake: An Athena view is a query abstraction and cannot deliver operational notifications.

2
Content Domain 2: Data Store Management

A logistics platform is implementing a new analytics workflow. It needs single-digit millisecond order lookups by order ID at very high scale. The access pattern is known and joins are not required. The engineering team wants clear failure handling and observability. Choose the most appropriate AWS-native option. What is the most appropriate design?

A Use Amazon DynamoDB with a suitable partition key. check_circle
B Use Amazon Redshift for every operational request.
C Use Athena for every customer-facing lookup.
D Use Amazon Aurora and perform relational queries for every lookup even though the key-value access pattern is fixed.
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Explanation

Reasoning: DynamoDB is designed for scalable low-latency key-value and document access patterns. Avoid this mistake: Redshift is optimized for analytics rather than millisecond operational request paths.

3
Content Domain 3: Data Operations and Support

A pharmaceutical distributor needs to improve a data engineering workload. It needs a SQL report with a seven-day rolling average of daily sales. The team wants a supportable solution with clear ownership. The team wants to avoid unnecessary components. Which approach most directly meets the requirement?

A Use a GROUP BY clause that returns one row per day without a window frame.
B Use a PIVOT operation without an ordered window.
C Use a window function over an ordered date range. check_circle
D Use ROW_NUMBER() without aggregating the seven-day range.
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Explanation

Best choice: A SQL window function is the standard approach for rolling calculations across ordered rows. Why the alternative fails: A GROUP BY clause can produce daily totals, but it does not calculate a seven-day rolling window without an appropriate window function.

4
Content Domain 4: Data Security and Governance

A public-sector agency is implementing a new analytics workflow. It needs a Lambda role that can read objects only from one S3 landing prefix and cannot delete them. No AWS managed policy matches the requirement. A recent audit found that the existing process is difficult to operate consistently. The requirement is straightforward and the team prefers the simplest managed approach. What is the most appropriate design?

A Make the bucket public-read.
B Create a custom IAM policy that grants only the required s3:GetObject access to the landing prefix. check_circle
C Attach AdministratorAccess to the role.
D Create an IAM user with a long-lived access key and share it with the function.
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Explanation

Best choice: A custom policy can scope the action and resource to the exact least-privilege requirement. Why the main distractor is wrong: AdministratorAccess grants unnecessary permissions and violates least privilege.

5
Content Domain 1: Data Ingestion and Transformation

A media-streaming company is preparing a production data platform change. It uses several Glue crawlers and Glue ETL jobs. Jobs should start after catalog discovery completes. The engineering team wants clear failure handling and observability. The requirement is straightforward and the team prefers the simplest managed approach. What should the data engineer do?

A Use an AWS Glue workflow with triggers. check_circle
B Use an S3 storage-class transition as the job dependency.
C Use a Redshift sort key.
D Use a DynamoDB TTL attribute.
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Explanation

Best choice: Glue workflows and triggers coordinate Glue crawlers and ETL jobs. Why the main distractor is wrong: A lifecycle transition changes storage class and does not orchestrate crawler and job dependencies.

6
Content Domain 2: Data Store Management

An e-commerce company is reviewing an existing data-processing design. It has a document-oriented application that uses MongoDB-compatible APIs. The engineering team wants clear failure handling and observability. The team wants to avoid unnecessary components. Which approach most directly meets the requirement?

A Use Amazon DocumentDB (with MongoDB compatibility). check_circle
B Use Amazon Data Firehose.
C Use Amazon Neptune.
D Use Amazon Redshift Spectrum.
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Explanation

Correct: DocumentDB supports document workloads with MongoDB compatibility. Why the main distractor is wrong: Neptune is designed for graph relationships rather than MongoDB-compatible document APIs.

7
Content Domain 3: Data Operations and Support

An insurance company is redesigning a data pipeline. It stores months of structured application logs in S3 and needs occasional SQL investigations without maintaining a search cluster. A recent audit found that the existing process is difficult to operate consistently. The team wants to avoid unnecessary components. What should the data engineer do?

A Use a DynamoDB local secondary index on the S3 bucket.
B Use AWS Secrets Manager.
C Use Amazon SNS to run SQL.
D Use Amazon Athena to query the S3 logs. check_circle
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Explanation

Why this works: Athena is well suited to occasional serverless SQL analysis of structured logs in S3. Avoid this mistake: SNS distributes notifications and does not query S3 files.

8
Content Domain 1: Data Ingestion and Transformation

A public-sector agency is implementing a new analytics workflow. It wants automated unit tests, build steps, and promotion of pipeline code after approved commits. Operational simplicity is important after deployment. Which option directly satisfies the requirement? Which solution should the data engineer recommend?

A Use AWS Glue crawlers as the release pipeline.
B Use a CI/CD workflow such as AWS CodeBuild with AWS CodePipeline and infrastructure-as-code deployments. check_circle
C Use an S3 Lifecycle rule to promote source code.
D Deploy production changes manually from an engineer laptop only.
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Explanation

Best choice: A CI/CD workflow automates testing and repeatable promotion of pipeline changes. Why the main distractor is wrong: Manual laptop deployments weaken repeatability, auditing, and environment consistency.

9
Content Domain 4: Data Security and Governance

A SaaS company is reviewing an existing data-processing design. It is comparing a self-managed database on EC2 with an AWS managed database service. The team wants to reduce patching, backup administration, and routine maintenance. The team wants a supportable solution with clear ownership. Choose the most appropriate AWS-native option. What should the data engineer do?

A Choose EC2 automatically because self-managed services always require less operational work.
B Select an appropriate managed database service when its capabilities meet the workload requirements. check_circle
C Store the database only in Lambda ephemeral storage.
D Use an SNS topic as the database engine.
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Explanation

Best choice: Managed services can reduce routine operational responsibilities when they fit the workload. Trap: A self-managed EC2 database generally leaves more patching and administration with the customer.

10
Content Domain 2: Data Store Management

A healthcare analytics provider is implementing a new analytics workflow. It receives evolving JSON records in S3. A new optional field appears while older records do not contain it. The company wants to reduce recurring manual maintenance. The requirement is straightforward and the team prefers the simplest managed approach. Which option is the best fit?

A Apply a backward-compatible schema-evolution strategy that treats the new field as optional. check_circle
B Disable the catalog so queries cannot see schema differences.
C Delete the existing dataset immediately.
D Reject all historical partitions because the optional field is absent.
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Explanation

Recommended: Compatible optional additions can be handled while preserving historical usability. Trap: Rejecting all older records for an optional field creates unnecessary breakage.

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