AWS Certified Data Engineer – Associate (DEA-C01) — Question 67

A company is migrating its database servers from Amazon EC2 instances that run Microsoft SQL Server to Amazon RDS for Microsoft SQL Server DB instances. The company's analytics team must export large data elements every day until the migration is complete. The data elements are the result of SQL joins across multiple tables. The data must be in Apache Parquet format. The analytics team must store the data in Amazon S3.
Which solution will meet these requirements in the MOST operationally efficient way?

Answer options

• A. Create a view in the EC2 instance-based SQL Server databases that contains the required data elements. Create an AWS Glue job that selects the data directly from the view and transfers the data in Parquet format to an S3 bucket. Schedule the AWS Glue job to run every day.
• B. Schedule SQL Server Agent to run a daily SQL query that selects the desired data elements from the EC2 instance-based SQL Server databases. Configure the query to direct the output .csv objects to an S3 bucket. Create an S3 event that invokes an AWS Lambda function to transform the output format from .csv to Parquet.
• C. Use a SQL query to create a view in the EC2 instance-based SQL Server databases that contains the required data elements. Create and run an AWS Glue crawler to read the view. Create an AWS Glue job that retrieves the data and transfers the data in Parquet format to an S3 bucket. Schedule the AWS Glue job to run every day.
• D. Create an AWS Lambda function that queries the EC2 instance-based databases by using Java Database Connectivity (JDBC). Configure the Lambda function to retrieve the required data, transform the data into Parquet format, and transfer the data into an S3 bucket. Use Amazon EventBridge to schedule the Lambda function to run every day.

Correct answer: A

Explanation

Option A is the most operationally efficient solution because it directly leverages AWS Glue to pull data from a view, simplifying the process of converting and transferring data to S3. Option B adds unnecessary complexity by involving SQL Server Agent and Lambda for format conversion, while Option C introduces an additional step with a Glue crawler. Option D requires a Lambda function to handle data retrieval and transformation, which can be more complex than using AWS Glue directly.