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Previous: What’s New in AWS

Book: AWS Certified Data Engineer Associate Study Guide Authors: Sakti Mishra, Dylan Qu, Anusha Challa Publisher: O’Reilly Media ISBN: 978-1-098-17007-3

Seventeen posts later, done with this book. Every chapter, every service, every exam domain. Time to step back and give an honest summary.

Overall Impressions

Solid study guide. Not perfect, but solid. The authors clearly know their stuff. They’re AWS Solution Architects who’ve built real data platforms, and it shows. Well structured, clear explanations, broad coverage that gives you a real foundation in AWS data engineering.

Thirty chapters. Three parts. Over a thousand pages. Thirty-one blog posts before this one. Here we are at the end of Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand (35th Anniversary Edition, ISBN: 9781101137192).

The book people argue about at dinner parties without having read it. Gets name-dropped by tech founders and dismissed by academics. Took Rand twelve years to write and takes most readers several months to finish. I went through it chapter by chapter, and I want to share what stuck with me now that the whole picture is in view.

Previous: Practice Exam Tips

Book: AWS Certified Data Engineer Associate Study Guide Authors: Sakti Mishra, Dylan Qu, Anusha Challa Publisher: O’Reilly Media ISBN: 978-1-098-17007-3

Chapter 10 is the forward-looking chapter. Everything in Chapters 1 through 9 was about established AWS services. This one covers what AWS announced at re:Invent 2024 and what’s coming next.

Some services are still in preview. Some just reached general availability. They may or may not show up on your DEA-C01 exam today. If you’re building data pipelines on AWS in 2025 and beyond though, you need to know where the platform is heading.

Previous: Part III, Chapter 9 - The Generator Next: Final Thoughts and Key Takeaways

The final chapter. After 1100+ pages, we get the ending.

The Rescue

Straight-up action sequence. Dagny walks up to the guard at Project F, where Galt is being held, and basically tells the guy to let her in or she will shoot him. The guard panics. Cannot decide. Keeps saying “Who am I to choose?” and “I’m not supposed to decide!” Dagny counts to three and shoots him.

Previous: Batch and Streaming Pipelines

Book: AWS Certified Data Engineer Associate Study Guide Authors: Sakti Mishra, Dylan Qu, Anusha Challa Publisher: O’Reilly Media ISBN: 978-1-098-17007-3

Chapter 9 is the practice exam. 42 questions covering all four domains of the DEA-C01 certification. Stop reading, start testing yourself.

What the Practice Exam Looks Like

42 questions. Most are single-answer multiple choice. Some ask you to select two or three correct answers. Multi-select questions always tell you how many to pick.