A data engineer maintains custom Python scripts that perform a data formatting process that many AWS Lambda functions use. When the data engineer needs to modify the Python scripts, the data engineer must manually update all the Lambda functions.
The data engineer requires a less manual way to update the Lambda functions. Which solution will meet this requirement?
Correct Answer:
B
Lambda layers are a way to share code and dependencies across multiple Lambda functions. By packaging the custom Python scripts into Lambda layers, the data engineer can update the scripts in one place and have them automatically applied to all the Lambda functions that use the layer. This reduces the manual effort and ensures consistency across the Lambda functions. The other options are either not feasible or not efficient. Storing a pointer to the custom Python scripts in the execution context object or in environment variables would require the Lambda functions to download the scripts from Amazon S3 every time they are invoked, which would increase latency and cost. Assigning the same alias to each Lambda function would not help with updating the Python scripts, as the alias only points to a specific version of the Lambda function code. References:
✑ AWS Lambda layers
✑ AWS Certified Data Engineer - Associate DEA-C01 Complete Study Guide, Chapter 3: Data Ingestion and Transformation, Section 3.4: AWS Lambda
A retail company has a customer data hub in an Amazon S3 bucket. Employees from many countries use the data hub to support company-wide analytics. A governance team must ensure that the company's data analysts can access data only for customers who are within the same country as the analysts.
Which solution will meet these requirements with the LEAST operational effort?
Correct Answer:
B
AWS Lake Formation is a service that allows you to easily set up, secure, and manage data lakes. One of the features of Lake Formation is row-level security, which enables you to control access to specific rows or columns of data based on the identity or role of the user. This feature is useful for scenarios where you need to restrict access to sensitive or regulated data, such as customer data from different countries. By registering the S3 bucket as a data lake location in Lake Formation, you can use the Lake Formation console or APIs to define and apply row-level security policies to the data in the bucket. You can also use Lake Formation blueprints to automate the ingestion and transformation of data from various sources into the data lake. This solution requires the least operational effort compared to the other options, as it does not involve creating or moving data, or managing multiple tables, views, or roles. References:
✑ AWS Lake Formation
✑ Row-Level Security
✑ AWS Certified Data Engineer - Associate DEA-C01 Complete Study Guide, Chapter 4: Data Lakes and Data Warehouses, Section 4.2: AWS Lake Formation
A manufacturing company wants to collect data from sensors. A data engineer needs to implement a solution that ingests sensor data in near real time.
The solution must store the data to a persistent data store. The solution must store the data in nested JSON format. The company must have the ability to query from the data store with a latency of less than 10 milliseconds.
Which solution will meet these requirements with the LEAST operational overhead?
Correct Answer:
C
Amazon Kinesis Data Streams is a service that enables you to collect, process, and analyze streaming data in real time. You can use Kinesis Data Streams to capture sensor data from various sources, such as IoT devices, web applications, or mobile apps. You can create data streams that can scale up to handle any amount of data from thousands of producers. You can also use the Kinesis Client Library (KCL) or the Kinesis Data Streams API to write applications that process and analyze the data in the streams1. Amazon DynamoDB is a fully managed NoSQL database service that provides fast and predictable performance with seamless scalability. You can use DynamoDB to store the sensor data in nested JSON format, as DynamoDB supports document data types, such as lists and maps. You can also use DynamoDB to query the data with a latency of less than 10 milliseconds, as DynamoDB offers single-digit millisecond performance for any scale of data. You can use the DynamoDB API or the AWS SDKs to perform queries on the data, such as using key-value lookups, scans, or queries2.
The solution that meets the requirements with the least operational overhead is to use Amazon Kinesis Data Streams to capture the sensor data and store the data in Amazon DynamoDB for querying. This solution has the following advantages:
✑ It does not require you to provision, manage, or scale any servers, clusters, or queues, as Kinesis Data Streams and DynamoDB are fully managed services that handle all the infrastructure for you. This reduces the operational complexity and cost of running your solution.
✑ It allows you to ingest sensor data in near real time, as Kinesis Data Streams can capture data records as they are produced and deliver them to your applications within seconds. You can also use Kinesis Data Firehose to load the data from the streams to DynamoDB automatically and continuously3.
✑ It allows you to store the data in nested JSON format, as DynamoDB supports document data types, such as lists and maps. You can also use DynamoDB Streams to capturechanges in the data and trigger actions, such as sending notifications or updating other databases.
✑ It allows you to query the data with a latency of less than 10 milliseconds, as DynamoDB offers single-digit millisecond performance for any scale of data. You can also use DynamoDB Accelerator (DAX) to improve the read performance by caching frequently accessed data.
Option A is incorrect because it suggests using a self-hosted Apache Kafka cluster to capture the sensor data and store the data in Amazon S3 for querying. This solution has the following disadvantages:
✑ It requires you to provision, manage, and scale your own Kafka cluster, either on EC2 instances or on-premises servers. This increases the operational complexity and cost of running your solution.
✑ It does not allow you to query the data with a latency of less than 10 milliseconds, as Amazon S3 is an object storage service that is not optimized for low-latency queries. You need to use another service, such as Amazon Athena or Amazon Redshift Spectrum, to query the data in S3, which may incur additional costs and latency.
Option B is incorrect because it suggests using AWS Lambda to process the sensor data and store the data in Amazon S3 for querying. This solution has the following disadvantages:
✑ It does not allow you to ingest sensor data in near real time, as Lambda is a serverless compute service that runs code in response to events. You need to use another service, such as API Gateway or Kinesis Data Streams, to trigger Lambda functions with sensor data, which may add extra latency and complexity to your solution.
✑ It does not allow you to query the data with a latency of less than 10 milliseconds, as Amazon S3 is an object storage service that is not optimized for low-latency queries. You need to use another service, such as Amazon Athena or Amazon Redshift Spectrum, to query the data in S3, which may incur additional costs and latency.
Option D is incorrect because it suggests using Amazon Simple Queue Service (Amazon SQS) to buffer incoming sensor data and use AWS Glue to store the data in Amazon RDS for querying. This solution has the following disadvantages:
✑ It does not allow you to ingest sensor data in near real time, as Amazon SQS is a message queue service that delivers messages in a best-effort manner. You need to use another service, such as Lambda or EC2, to poll the messages from the queue and process them, which may add extra latency and complexity to your solution.
✑ It does not allow you to store the data in nested JSON format, as Amazon RDS is a relational database service that supports structured data types, such as tables and columns. You need to use another service, such as AWS Glue, to transform the data from JSON to relational format, which may add extra cost and overhead to your solution.
References:
✑ 1: Amazon Kinesis Data Streams - Features
✑ 2: Amazon DynamoDB - Features
✑ 3: Loading Streaming Data into Amazon DynamoDB - Amazon Kinesis Data Firehose
✑ [4]: Capturing Table Activity with DynamoDB Streams - Amazon DynamoDB
✑ [5]: Amazon DynamoDB Accelerator (DAX) - Features
✑ [6]: Amazon S3 - Features
✑ [7]: AWS Lambda - Features
✑ [8]: Amazon Simple Queue Service - Features
✑ [9]: Amazon Relational Database Service - Features
✑ [10]: Working with JSON in Amazon RDS - Amazon Relational Database Service
✑ [11]: AWS Glue - Features
