AWS Certified Data Engineer – AssociateData Ingestion and TransformationMedium
A company has a legacy on-premises database (Microsoft SQL Server) containing critical business data. They need to migrate this database to Amazon RDS for PostgreSQL and establish a continuous, low-latency replication link to keep the RDS instance up-to-date with changes in the on-premises database. The solution must handle ongoing schema changes and data type conversions automatically. Which AWS service should be used for this continuous data ingestion and transformation?
- AAWS Database Migration Service (DMS)
- BAWS DataSync
- CAmazon EMR
- DAWS Glue ETL
Show answer & explanationAnswer & explanation
Correct answer: A. AWS Database Migration Service (DMS)
AWS Database Migration Service (DMS) is specifically designed for migrating databases to AWS and establishing continuous data replication. It supports heterogeneous migrations (e.g., SQL Server to PostgreSQL), handles schema conversion (with the Schema Conversion Tool), data type mapping, and provides continuous 'Change Data Capture' (CDC) for low-latency synchronization.
Why the other options are wrong
- B. DataSync is for file/object storage transfers, not for database migration and continuous replication.
- C. Amazon EMR is a big data processing framework, not suitable for direct database migration and replication.
- D. AWS Glue ETL is for general-purpose batch or streaming data transformation, not optimized for continuous, transactional database replication.
AWS Database Migration Service (DMS)
A cloud service that makes it easy to migrate relational databases, data warehouses, NoSQL databases, and other types of data stores.
- Supports homogeneous and heterogeneous migrations.
- Enables continuous data replication (Change Data Capture).
- Automates schema and data type conversions.
Memory trick: DMS moves and mirrors databases, even different types.