Free Associate-Data-Practitioner Questions Attempt

Dataform workflowsare the ideal solution for migrating batch transformation pipelines to Google Cloud when you want to perform programmatic transformations using only SQL. Dataform allows you to define SQL-based workflows for data transformations and supports Git integration for version control, enabling collaboration and version tracking of your pipelines. This approach is purpose-built for SQL-driven data pipeline management and aligns perfectly with your requirements.

The solution must use SQL for transformations and integrate with Git for version control, focusing on batch pipelines. Let’s evaluate:

Option A: Cloud Data Fusion uses a visual UI with plugins, not SQL-only transformations. It lacks native Git integration (requires external tools), missing a key requirement.

Option B: Dataform is a SQL-based workflow tool for BigQuery transformations, defining pipelines as SQLX scripts. It integrates natively with Git for version control, supporting batch ELT processes with minimal overhead.

Option C: Cloud Composer uses Python DAGs and operators, not SQL-only transformations. Git is possible but not intrinsic to its workflow design.

Using BigQuery to batch load the data and perform cleaning and analysis with SQL is the best approach for this scenario. BigQuery provides powerful SQL capabilities to handle missing values, enforce correct data types, and remove duplicates efficiently. This method simplifies the pipeline by leveraging BigQuery’s built-in processing power for both cleaning and analysis, reducing the need for additional tools or services and minimizing complexity.

UsingCloud Composerto design the processing pipeline as a Directed Acyclic Graph (DAG) is the most suitable approach because:

Fault tolerance: Cloud Composer (based on Apache Airflow) allows for handling failures at specific stages. You can clear the state of a failed task and rerun it without reprocessing the entire pipeline.

Stage-based processing: DAGs are ideal for workflows with interdependent stages where the output of one stage serves as input to the next.

Efficiency: This approach minimizes downtime and ensures that only failed stages are rerun, leading to faster final output generation.

The ETL (Extract, Transform, Load) methodology is the best approach for this scenario because it allows you to extract data from the files, transform it by applying the necessary data cleansing (including removing malicious SQL injections), and then load the sanitized data into BigQuery. By transforming the data before loading it into BigQuery, you ensure that only clean and safe data is stored, which is critical for security and data quality.