Pulling in and importing data from an external source

Google Cloud offers multiple purpose-built services for ingesting data depending on source type, velocity, and format: batch files, streaming events, database changes, and transfers from other clouds or SaaS sources. Choosing the right ingestion path (Pub/Sub, Storage Transfer Service, Datastream, Transfer Appliance, or direct API/client library loads) is central to a well-architected pipeline. The exam tests your ability to match ingestion scenarios to the correct managed service based on latency, volume, and source constraints.

Must-know

  • Pub/Sub is the standard entry point for streaming/event ingestion, providing at-least-once delivery, global endpoints, and decoupling of producers from consumers (Dataflow, BigQuery subscriptions, etc.).
  • Storage Transfer Service handles scheduled, large-scale batch transfers from on-premises, other clouds (S3, Azure Blob), or HTTP/S sources directly into Cloud Storage without writing custom code.
  • Transfer Appliance is the correct choice for offline, physical-device transfer of very large datasets (hundreds of TB to PB) when network bandwidth makes online transfer impractical.
  • Datastream is Google Cloud's serverless change data capture (CDC) service, replicating data in near real-time from operational databases (MySQL, PostgreSQL, Oracle, SQL Server) into BigQuery, Cloud Storage, or Spanner.
  • BigQuery Data Transfer Service automates recurring ingestion from SaaS applications (Google Ads, YouTube, etc.) and other warehouses (Redshift, Teradata) directly into BigQuery tables on a schedule.
  • For direct file loads, BigQuery supports native batch loading from Cloud Storage (various formats like CSV, JSON, Avro, Parquet) at no query cost, distinct from streaming inserts which incur cost and have different consistency/latency tradeoffs.
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Coverage checked against the published exam guide on Aug 11, 2026.

These are independent practice questions, written against this certification's published exam guide. They are not the certification vendor's own questions, and not the real exam.