Associate-Data-Practitioner Questions and Answers

Creating asingle Explorewith all the sales metrics is the Google-recommended approach. This Explore should be designed to include all relevant attributes and dimensions, enabling users to analyze sales data by region, product category, time period, and other filters like sales representatives. With a well-structured Explore, you can efficiently build a dashboard that supports filtering and drill-down functionality. This approach simplifies maintenance, provides a consistent data model, and ensures users have the flexibility to interact with and analyze the data seamlessly within a unified framework.

Using aCloud Run functiontriggered by Cloud Storage to load the data into BigQuery is the best solution because it minimizes both cost and maintenance while providing low-latency data ingestion. Cloud Run is a serverless platform that automatically scales based on the workload, ensuring efficient use of resources without requiring a dedicated instance or cluster. It integrates seamlessly with Cloud Storage event notifications, enabling real-time processing of incoming files and loading them into BigQuery. This approach is cost-effective, scalable, and easy to manage.

Using Dataflow with a Python-coded Directed Acyclic Graph (DAG) is the most efficient solution for generating a weekly aggregated sales report based on a large volume of data. Dataflow is optimized for large-scale data processing and can handle aggregation efficiently. Python allows you to customize the pipeline logic, and Cloud Scheduler enables you to automate the process to run weekly. This approach ensures scalability, efficiency, and the ability to process large datasets in a cost-effective manner.

To troubleshoot a failed Dataflow job as quickly as possible, you should navigate to theDataflow Jobs page in the Google Cloud console. The console provides access to detailed job logs and worker logs, which can help you identify the cause of the failure. The graphical interface also allows you to visualize pipeline stages, monitor performance metrics, and pinpoint where the error occurred, making it the most efficient way to diagnose and resolve the issue promptly.

UsingBigQuery's built-in functionsis the most effective and efficient way to clean the dataset directly within BigQuery. BigQuery provides powerful SQL capabilities to handle missing values, remove duplicates, and resolve formatting issues without needing to export data or create complex pipelines. This approach minimizes overhead and leverages the scalability of BigQuery for large datasets, making it an ideal solution for quickly addressing data quality issues.

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 that your organization retains full control and responsibility over the encryption process, meeting strict regulatory compliance requirements.

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.

Configuring aCloud Storage lifecycle ruleto automatically delete objects older than seven days is the best solution because:

Built-in feature: Cloud Storage lifecycle rules are specifically designed to manage object lifecycles, such as automatically deleting or transitioning objects based on age.

No additional setup: It requires no external services or custom code, reducing complexity and maintenance.

Cost-effective: It directly achieves the goal of deleting files after seven days without incurring additional compute costs.

Creatingmaterialized viewsis the best solution to improve dashboard loading time while ensuring that the data is as up-to-date as possible. Materialized views precompute and cache the results of complex joins and aggregations, significantly reducing query execution time for dashboards. They also automatically update as the underlying data changes, ensuring near real-time access to fresh data. This approach optimizes query performance and provides an efficient and scalable solution for streaming data dashboards.

Using Database Migration Service (DMS) to replicate the MySQL database to a Cloud SQL for MySQL instance is the best approach. DMS is a fully managed service designed for migrating databases to Google Cloud with minimal downtime and cost. It supports continuous data replication, ensuring data integrity during the migration process, and handles schema and data transfer efficiently. This solution isparticularly suited for large tables and transactional data, as it maintains real-time synchronization between the source and target databases, minimizing downtime for the migration.

Loading the data into BigQuery using aCloud Run functionand creating aBigQuery remote functionthat invokes theCloud Translation APIis a serverless and efficient approach. With this setup, you can use ascheduled queryin BigQuery to invoke the remote function and translate new product reviews on a regular basis. This solution requires minimal maintenance, as BigQuery handles storage and querying, and the Cloud Translation API provides accurate translations without the need for custom ML model development.

Using Analytics Hub to create a private exchange with data egress restrictions ensures controlled sharing of the dataset while minimizing the risk of unauthorized copying. This approach allows you to providesecure, managed access to the dataset without giving direct access to the raw data. The egress restriction ensures that data cannot be exported or copied outside the designated boundaries. Additionally, this solution provides a reusable framework that simplifies future data sharing with other teams or projects while maintaining strict data governance.

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.

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 BigQuery to batch load the data and perform cleaning and analysis with SQL is the best approach for this scenario. BigQuery provides powerful SQL capabilities to handle missing values, enforce correct data types, and remove duplicates efficiently. This method simplifies the pipeline by leveraging BigQuery’s built-in processing power for both cleaning and analysis, reducing the need for additional tools or services and minimizing complexity.

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 it grants 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.