AWS Certified Data Engineer – AssociateData Ingestion and TransformationHard

A global e-commerce company wants to centralize customer clickstream data from various regional websites for real-time analytics and personalized recommendations. The data arrives continuously and needs to be transformed (e.g., anonymize PII, enrich with product catalog data) before being loaded into a data lake in Amazon S3 and a data warehouse in Amazon Redshift. The solution must be fully managed and support both real-time ingestion and transformation. Which AWS service combination is most suitable?

  1. AAmazon Kinesis Data Streams with AWS Glue Streaming ETL
  2. BAWS DataSync with AWS Glue Batch ETL
  3. CAmazon MSK with AWS Step Functions
  4. DAmazon Kinesis Data Firehose with AWS Lambda
Show answer & explanation

Correct answer: A. Amazon Kinesis Data Streams with AWS Glue Streaming ETL

Amazon Kinesis Data Streams provides real-time ingestion of continuous data. AWS Glue Streaming ETL can consume data directly from Kinesis Data Streams, perform real-time transformations (anonymization, enrichment), and then deliver the processed data to S3 and Redshift. This combination offers a fully managed, scalable, and real-time solution.

Why the other options are wrong

  • B. AWS DataSync is for batch file transfers, not real-time streaming. AWS Glue Batch ETL is for periodic batch processing, not real-time streaming transformations.
  • C. Amazon MSK (Managed Streaming for Apache Kafka) is a good ingestion service but requires managing Kafka clusters. AWS Step Functions is an orchestration service, not an ETL engine for streaming data transformation.
  • D. Kinesis Data Firehose has limited transformation capabilities (Lambda for basic record transformations), and complex enrichment is better handled by a dedicated ETL engine like Glue Streaming ETL. Lambda can also be less cost-effective for continuous high-volume streaming transformations compared to Glue Streaming ETL.

Kinesis Data Streams + Glue Streaming ETL

A powerful combination for real-time data ingestion and serverless, continuous transformation of streaming data, enabling delivery to various AWS destinations.

  • Kinesis Data Streams for real-time ingestion
  • Glue Streaming ETL for serverless, continuous transformations
  • Supports multiple destinations like S3 and Redshift

Memory trick: Kinesis streams flow, Glue transforms, data glows.

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