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DEA-C01 Practice Question 93: Express Workflow Long Running Query

AWS Certified Data Engineer – Associate (DEA-C01) · Test 10 · question 3 of 10

Data Ingestion and Transformationmedium

A data engineer creates an AWS Step Functions state machine as an Express workflow to save cost. One state runs an Amazon Athena CTAS query with the startQueryExecution.sync integration, and the query typically takes about 20 minutes. The state machine cannot run the pipeline as designed. The engineer wants the workflow to wait for the query before it continues, with as little custom code as possible. What should the engineer do?

Select one answer
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Answer:

  • D. Recreate the state machine as a Standard workflow.

Express workflows *"can run for up to five minutes"* and *"do not support Job-run (.sync) or Callback (.waitForTaskToken) service integration patterns."* Standard workflows are *"ideal for long-running (up to one year), durable, and auditable workflows"* and support all service integration patterns. AWS also notes that *"the workflow type can not be updated after you create a state machine,"* so the engineer creates a new Standard state machine that uses the .sync integration to wait for the query (option D).

- A is wrong because the five-minute maximum of an Express workflow is fixed. It cannot be raised, so a 20-minute step can never run inside it. - B is wrong because Express workflows do not support the Callback pattern either. - C is wrong because even without the .sync call, the Wait state would push the execution far beyond five minutes, and a fixed wait does not confirm that the query has finished.

Reference: Choosing workflow type in Step Functions

Practice Test 10 ›

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