Associate-Data-Practitioner Google Cloud Associate Data Practitioner (ADP Exam) Question and Answers

To analyze audio files stored in a Cloud Storage bucket and represent them in BigQuery, you should create an object table. Object tables in BigQuery are designed to represent objects stored in Cloud Storage, including their metadata. This enables you to query the metadata of audio files directly from BigQuery without duplicating the data. Once the object table is created, you can use it in conjunction with other BigQuery ML workflows for inference and analysis.

Comprehensive and Detailed In-Depth Explanation:

Streaming data requiring enrichment and cleaning before ML training suggests an ETL (Extract, Transform, Load) approach, with a focus on real-time processing and a data warehouse for ML.

Option A: ETL with Dataflow (streaming transformations) and BigQuery (storage/ML training) is Google’s recommended pattern for streaming pipelines. Dataflow handles enrichment/cleaning, and BigQuery supports ML model training (BigQuery ML).

Option B: ETL with Cloud Data Fusion to Cloud Storage is batch-oriented and lacks streaming focus. Cloud Storage isn’t ideal for ML training directly.

Option C: ELT (load then transform) with Cloud Storage to Bigtable is misaligned—Bigtable is for NoSQL, not ML training or post-load transformation.

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.

Defining a newmeasurein LookML to calculate the profit margin using the existing revenue and cost fields is the most efficient and straightforward solution. This approach allows you to dynamically compute the profit margin directly within your Looker Explores and dashboards without needing to pre-calculate or create additional tables. The measure can be defined using LookML syntax, such as:

measure: profit_margin {

type: number

sql: (revenue - cost) / revenue ;;

value_format: "0.0%"

}

This method is quick to implement and integrates seamlessly into your existing Looker model, enabling accurate visualization of profit margins across your products.

Using theLooker Schedulerwithuser attribute filtersis the Google-recommended approach to efficiently automate the delivery of a customized dashboard. User attribute filters allow you to dynamically customize the dashboard's content based on the recipient’s attributes, ensuring each stakeholder sees data relevant to them. This approach is scalable, does not require creating separate models or custom scripts, and leverages Looker’s built-in functionality to automate recurring deliveries effectively.

Audio files from phone interactions: Use Cloud Storage. Cloud Storage is ideal for storing large binary objects like audio files, offering scalability and easy accessibility for training purposes.

CSV files of users’ personally identifiable information (PII): Use BigQuery. BigQuery is a serverless data warehouse optimized for analyzing structured data, such as CSV files, using SQL. It ensures compliance with PII handling through access controls and data encryption.

A large volume of small document files: Use Firestore. Firestore is a scalable NoSQL database designed for applications requiring fast, real-time interactions and structured document storage, making it suitable for powering other applications.

Comprehensive and Detailed In-Depth Explanation:

The solution must support SQL-based ELT, be serverless and cost-effective, and include advanced features like version control and quality checks. Let’s dive in:

Option A: Cloud Data Fusion is a visual ETL tool, not SQL-centric (uses plugins), and isn’t fully serverless (requires instance management). It lacks native source code control and parameterization.

Option B: Dataform is a serverless, SQL-based ELT platform for BigQuery. It uses SQLX scripts, integrates with Git for version control, supports environment variables (parameterization), and offers assertions for data quality—all meeting the requirements cost-effectively.

Option C: Dataproc is for Spark/MapReduce, not SQL ELT, and requires cluster management, contradicting serverless and cost goals.

Comprehensive and Detailed In-Depth Explanation:

Forecasting product demand with seasonality requires a time series model, and BigQuery ML offers a scalable, serverless solution. Let’s analyze:

Option A: BigQuery ML’s time series models (e.g., ARIMA_PLUS) are designed for forecasting with seasonality and trends. The ML.FORECAST function generates predictions based on historical data, storing them in a table. This is scalable (no infrastructure) and integrates natively with BigQuery, ideal for ecommerce demand prediction.

Option B: Colab Enterprise with a custom Python model (e.g., Prophet) is flexible but requires coding, maintenance, and potentially exporting data, reducing scalability compared to BigQuery ML’s in-place processing.

Option C: Linear regression predicts continuous values but doesn’t handle seasonality or time series patterns effectively, making it unsuitable for demand forecasting.

Using a Colab Enterprise notebook connected to BigQuery provides a managed, collaborative environment ideal for complex statistical calculations, Python packages, and visualizations. Colab Enterprise supports Python libraries for advanced analytics and offers seamless integration with BigQuery for querying large datasets. It allows teams to collaboratively develop and share analyses while taking advantage of its visualization capabilities. This approach is particularly suitable for tasks involving sophisticated computations and custom visualizations.

UsingNearline storagein Cloud Storage is the best option for data that is accessed infrequently (such as once a month) but must be readily available within seconds when needed. Nearline offers a balance between low storage costs and quick retrieval times, making it ideal for scenarios like monthly analysis of historical data. It is specifically designed for infrequent access patterns while avoiding the higher retrieval costs and longer access times of Coldline or Archive storage.

Enabling automatic backups and creating a read replica of the Cloud SQL instance is the best solution to improve read performance. Read replicas allow you to offload read traffic from the primary database instance, reducing its load and improving overall performance. This approach is cost-effective and easy to implement within Cloud SQL. It ensures that the primary instance focuses on write operations while replicas handle read queries, providing a seamless performance boost with minimal effort.

UsingDataflowto implement a streaming pipeline triggered by anOBJECT_FINALIZEnotification from Pub/Sub is the best solution. This approach automatically starts the data processing as soon as new files are uploaded to Cloud Storage, ensuring low latency. Dataflow can handle the data cleaning, deduplication, and enrichment with product information from the BigQuery table in a scalable and efficient manner. This solution minimizes overhead, as Dataflow is a fully managed service, and it is well-suited for real-time or near-real-time data pipelines.

Creating arow-level access policyin BigQuery ensures that each sales representative can see only the transactions relevant to their region. Row-level access policies allow you to define fine-grained access control by filtering rows based on specific conditions, such as matching the sales representative's region. This approach enforces security while providing tailored data access, aligning with the principle of least privilege.

Extract from Google Documentation: From "Row-Level Security in BigQuery" (https://cloud.google.com/bigquery/docs/row-level-security ):"Row-level access policies let you restrict access to specific rows in a table based on a filter condition, such as a user’s region, providing fine-grained control over data visibility without creating separate tables or views."

Creating acustom field from the field picker in Lookerallows you to add new fields to your report without requiring theDevelop permission. Custom fields are created directly in the Looker UI, enabling you to define calculations or transformations that generate SQL for the database query. This approach is user-friendly and does not require access to the LookML layer, making it the appropriate choice for your situation.

TheDataflow Developerrole provides the necessary permissions to manage Dataflow streaming pipelines, including the ability to restart pipelines. This role adheres to the principle of least privilege, as itgrants only the permissions required to manage and operate Dataflow jobs without unnecessary administrative access. Other roles, such as Dataflow Admin, would grant broader permissions, which are not needed in this scenario.

Comprehensive and Detailed In-Depth Explanation:

The pipeline must extract diverse data types and load them into systems optimized for analysis and ML. Let’s assess:

Option A: Cloud SQL for transactions keeps data relational but isn’t ideal for analysis/ML (less scalable than BigQuery). BigQuery for feedback is fine but skips staging. Cloud Storage for streaming social media loses real-time context and requires extra steps for analysis.

Option B: BigQuery for transactions (via export from MySQL) supports analysis/ML with SQL. Cloud Storage stages feedback text files for preprocessing, then BigQuery ingestion. Pub/Sub and Dataflow stream social media into BigQuery, enabling real-time analysis—optimal for all sources.

Option C: Cloud Storage for all data is a staging step, not a final solution for analysis/ML, requiring additional pipelines.

Setting a table-level retention policy in BigQuery to seven years is the most efficient and cost-optimized solution to meet the regulatory requirement. A table-level retention policy ensures that the data cannot be deleted or overwritten before the specified retention period expires, providing compliance with auditing requirements while keeping the data within BigQuery for easy access and analysis. This approach avoids the complexity and additional costs of exporting data to Cloud Storage.

For regulatory requirements that mandate complete and manual control of data encryption, you should use customer-supplied encryption keys (CSEK). With CSEK, your company provides the encryption keys for data storage, and Google Cloud does not store or manage these keys. This approach ensures thatyour organization retains full control and responsibility over the encryption process, meeting strict regulatory compliance requirements.

Using theStorage Transfer Serviceis the best solution for migrating data from an on-premises NFS to Google Cloud. This service allows you to control bandwidth usage by configuring transfer speed limits and provides detailed reporting on the migration status. Storage Transfer Service is specifically designed for large-scale data migrations and supports scheduling, monitoring, and error handling, making it an efficient and reliable choice for your use case.

Comprehensive and Detailed In-Depth Explanation:

The strategy requires storage in two specific regions with automated high availability (HA). Cloud Storage location options dictate the solution:

Option A: A dual-region bucket (e.g., us-west1 and us-east1) replicates data synchronously across two user-specified regions, ensuring HA without manual intervention. It’s fully automated and meets the requirement.

Option B: Two single-region buckets with gcloud storage replication is manual, not automated, and lacks real-time HA (requires scripting and monitoring).

Option C: Multi-region buckets (e.g., us) span multiple regions within a geography but don’t let you specify exactly two regions, potentially violating the restriction.

Comprehensive and Detailed In-Depth Explanation:

For a 25 TB dataset, efficiency and cost require minimizing data movement and leveraging BigQuery’s scalability within Colab Enterprise.

Option A: Exporting 25 TB to Google Drive and loading via Pandas is impractical (size limits, transfer costs) and slow.

Option B: BigQuery magic commands (%%bigquery) in Colab Enterprise allow direct querying of BigQuery data, keeping processing in the cloud, reducing costs, and enabling collaboration.

Option C: Dataproc with Spark adds cluster costs and complexity, unnecessary when BigQuery can handle the workload.

UsingTransfer Appliancesis the best solution for securely and efficiently moving over 500 TB of data to Cloud Storage within a limited timeframe, especially with network bandwidth below 1 Gbps. Transfer Appliances are physical devices provided by Google Cloud to securely transfer large amounts of data. After copying the data to the appliances, they are shipped back to Google, where the data is uploaded to Cloud Storage. This approach bypasses bandwidth limitations and ensures the data is migrated quickly and securely.

Using Google-managed encryption keys (GMEK) is the best choice when you want to encrypt sensitive data in Cloud Storage without the operational overhead of managing encryption keys. GMEK is the default encryption mechanism in Google Cloud, and it ensures that data is automatically encrypted at rest with no additional setup or maintenance required. It provides strong security while eliminating the need for manual key management.

Google Cloud encrypts all data at rest by default, and the simplest way to avoid key management overhead is to use Google-managed encryption keys (GMEK).

Option A: GMEK is fully managed by Google, requiring no user intervention, and meets the requirement of no operational overhead while ensuring encryption.

Option B: CMEK requires managing keys in Cloud KMS, adding operational overhead.

Option C: CSEK requires users to supply and manage keys externally, increasing complexity significantly.