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DEA-C01 practice question: Open table formats and Apache Iceberg (1 of 2)

Data Store Management A free question from our original DEA-C01 practice exam. Try it, then open the answer to see why each option is right or wrong.

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A regional bank stores daily account-balance snapshots in an Apache Iceberg table on Amazon S3, queried with Amazon Athena. Auditors need to see the table exactly as it was at each month-end close, even after later corrections. Engineers also need to rename a column for a downstream system without rewriting the full history.

The bank wants to keep a single copy of the data and avoid building a separate monthly archive job.

Which approach meets these requirements?

Choose one answer.

  1. A. Keep a Hive table in Parquet, copy it to a new S3 prefix at each month-end with a Glue job, and rename the column in every copy.
  2. B. Use an Iceberg table with Athena time travel to query each month-end version, and rename the column without rewriting files.
  3. C. Enable S3 Versioning on the bucket, and restore each object version by hand when an auditor asks for a month-end view.
  4. D. Use a DynamoDB table for the balances, and rely on its TTL to keep the month-end values for the auditors.
Show the answer and explanation

Answer: B

  • A. Wrong: Monthly copies store the data several times and need a job to create and maintain them. Renaming the column in every copy also rewrites a lot of data, which the bank wants to avoid.
  • B. Right: Correct. Iceberg keeps table snapshots, so Athena can query the table as of a past time. Iceberg tracks columns by ID, so a rename changes metadata and does not rewrite the existing data files. Learn more: Query Apache Iceberg tables (opens in a new tab)
  • C. Wrong: S3 versions the objects, not the table's rows, so restoring a month-end view means rebuilding the table manually from object versions. The option does not give table-level time travel or metadata-only schema changes.
  • D. Wrong: TTL deletes expired items, which is the opposite of keeping historical values for audit. The option does not preserve table state and is not suited to analytic queries.

Explanation

Apache Iceberg keeps snapshots of a table, which lets Athena query a month-end state without separate copies. Schema changes such as renaming a column are metadata operations that leave the data files alone. Monthly copies, S3 object versions and DynamoDB TTL do not give table-level history or metadata-only changes.

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