ACA Big Data study guide
ACA Big Data · Work through your exam, one topic at a time.
The ACA Big Data certification is an Alibaba Cloud associate-level credential aimed at data engineers, analytics developers, and cloud practitioners who build and operate big data workloads on Alibaba Cloud. The exam is delivered as multiple choice and is organised into five equally weighted domains of 20% each: big data fundamentals and the Alibaba Cloud big data product landscape; data integration and development with DataWorks; data storage and computation with MaxCompute; real-time and streaming data processing; and data analytics, visualisation, and security operations. The ACA Big Data study guide has 5 sections and about 1,562 words.
01Big Data Fundamentals and Alibaba Cloud Big Data Products
Start with the shared vocabulary: volume, velocity, variety, veracity, and value describe why distributed systems exist, while batch versus streaming, OLTP versus OLAP, and storage-compute coupling versus separation describe how they are built. On Alibaba Cloud the core product map is what questions test.
345 words, about 2 min02Data Integration and Development (DataWorks)
DataWorks is where most operational questions live. Know its layers: Data Integration for data synchronization (batch offline sync and real-time sync), DataStudio for authoring and scheduling nodes, Operation Center for monitoring and rerunning instances, and Data Quality and Data Map for governance and lineage.
323 words, about 2 min03Data Storage and Computation (MaxCompute)
MaxCompute organizes data into projects , then tables , with partitions as the primary pruning mechanism. Understand table types: internal tables (data managed by MaxCompute), external tables (metadata points at OSS or other storage), and partitioned versus non-partitioned tables.
312 words, about 2 min04Real-Time and Streaming Data Processing
Streaming questions test whether you understand unbounded data. Core concepts: event time versus processing time , watermarks to bound lateness, windows (tumbling, sliding, session), state and checkpointing for fault tolerance, and exactly-once versus at-least-once semantics.
291 words, about 1 min05Data Analytics, Visualization, and Security Operations
This domain combines query/serving tools, visualization, and governance. For analytics, know Hologres (real-time, PostgreSQL-compatible, federated queries into MaxCompute), AnalyticDB (high-concurrency OLAP), and Quick BI for dashboards.
291 words, about 1 min