Data Processing Cycle 5

Question 1

In data processing, 'backpressure' during a streaming cycle refers to:

Accepted Answer

A mechanism where a slow consumer signals upstream producers to slow down data emission

Answer

Backpressure prevents a fast producer from overwhelming a slow consumer by propagating a slow-down signal upstream through the pipeline.

Question 2

The PDCA cycle (Plan-Do-Check-Act) is applied in data processing quality management to:

Accepted Answer

Continuously improve data pipeline quality through iterative testing and adjustment

Answer

PDCA provides a repeating improvement loop: plan changes to data quality processes, implement them, measure outcomes, and adjust accordingly.

Question 3

In an ELT (Extract, Load, Transform) cycle compared to ETL, transformation occurs:

Accepted Answer

After raw data is loaded into the target data warehouse or lake

Answer

ELT loads raw data first, then leverages the compute power of the target system (e.g., BigQuery or Snowflake) to run transformations.

Question 4

Which scenario best illustrates 'late-arriving data' in a streaming processing cycle?

Accepted Answer

An event with a timestamp from 10 minutes ago arrives after the processing window for that period has already closed

Answer

Late-arriving data has an event timestamp that falls within a past window that the system has already finalized, requiring special handling like watermarks.

Question 5

In a data warehouse, a 'Type 2 Slowly Changing Dimension' (SCD2) cycle handles attribute changes by:

Accepted Answer

Adding a new row with the updated value and marking the old row as expired

Answer

SCD2 preserves full history by inserting a new dimension row for each change and closing the prior row with an end date or a current-row flag.

Data Processing Practice Test

Data Processing Practice Test

Data Processing Cycle 5