AI/ML, Analytics, Dev Tools, End User, IoT

Question 1

What are the 3 tiers of AWS AI/ML services?

Answer 1

1. AI Services (pre-built): use ML capabilities without ML expertise (Rekognition, Polly, Lex, etc.) | 2. ML Services (managed ML): SageMaker for building, training, and deploying custom models | 3. ML Frameworks/Infrastructure: EC2 with GPUs, AWS Inferentia chips for fully custom ML work

Question 2

What is Amazon SageMaker?

Answer 2

Fully managed end-to-end ML platform. Components: Studio (IDE), Notebooks (Jupyter), Training, Autopilot (AutoML), Feature Store, Model Registry, Pipelines (CI/CD for ML), Endpoints (real-time/batch inference). Use cases: fraud detection, recommendations, predictive maintenance.

Question 3

What is Amazon Lex?

Answer 3

Builds conversational chatbots using voice and text – the same technology powering Alexa. Components: Intents (user goal), Utterances (trigger phrases), Slots (required variables), Fulfillment (Lambda). Use cases: customer service bots, virtual assistants, automated FAQ.

Question 4

What is Amazon Kendra?

Answer 4

Intelligent enterprise search powered by ML. Indexes documents and answers natural language questions (not just keyword search). Understands context and synonyms. Supports S3, SharePoint, RDS, ServiceNow, Salesforce, GitHub.

Question 5

What is Amazon Comprehend?

Answer 5

NLP service that extracts insights from text. Capabilities: entity recognition, key phrase extraction, sentiment analysis (positive/negative/neutral/mixed), language detection, topic modelling, PII detection.

Question 6

What is Amazon Polly?

Answer 6

Text-to-Speech (TTS) service. Converts text to lifelike speech. 60+ languages, 100+ voices. Neural TTS (NTTS) for most natural sound. Supports SSML for fine-grained control. Use cases: accessibility, e-learning, voice apps.

Question 7

What is Amazon Rekognition?

Answer 7

Image and video analysis powered by deep learning. Capabilities: face detection/analysis/comparison, object/scene detection, OCR (text in image), content moderation, celebrity recognition, activity detection in video, PPE detection. Use cases: security, identity verification, content moderation.

Question 8

What is Amazon Textract?

Answer 8

Automatically extracts text and structured data from scanned documents – goes beyond simple OCR. Can extract printed text, handwriting, form key-value pairs, and tables. Use cases: medical records, expense processing, mortgage documents, identity documents.

Question 9

What is Amazon Transcribe?

Answer 9

Automatic Speech Recognition (ASR) – speech to text. Supports transcription of audio/video files and real-time streaming. Speaker identification, custom vocabulary, auto punctuation, language identification. Amazon Transcribe Medical for healthcare. Use cases: meeting transcription, call centre analytics, subtitles.

Question 10

What is Amazon Translate?

Answer 10

Neural machine translation supporting 75+ languages. Provides real-time and batch translation. Use cases: localisation, multilingual customer support, cross-language content analysis.

Question 11

Quick match – which AI/ML service for each task?

Answer 11

Speech to text → Transcribe. | Text to speech → Polly. | Image/video analysis → Rekognition. | Document extraction → Textract. | Chatbots → Lex. | Enterprise search → Kendra. | NLP/text analysis → Comprehend. | Language translation → Translate. | Custom ML models → SageMaker.

Question 12

What is Amazon Athena?

Answer 12

Serverless SQL query service that queries data directly in S3 – no ETL or loading required. Supports CSV, JSON, Parquet, ORC. Pay per query ($5/TB scanned). Commonly used with AWS Glue for data cataloguing.

Question 13

What is AWS Glue?

Answer 13

Serverless ETL (Extract, Transform, Load) service. Discovers and catalogues data. Often paired with Athena or Redshift.

Question 14

What is Amazon EMR?

Answer 14

Managed Hadoop and Spark service for big data processing at scale.

Question 15

What is Amazon OpenSearch?

Answer 15

AWS-managed clone of Elasticsearch. Used for search and log analytics.

Question 16

What is AWS Data Exchange?

Answer 16

Allows you to subscribe to and use third-party data sets directly within AWS.

Question 17

What is Amazon QuickSight?

Answer 17

Business intelligence (BI) tool for creating dashboards, visualisations, and reports from AWS and other data sources.

Question 18

What is AWS Lake Formation?

Answer 18

Service for building, securing, and managing data lakes on S3.

Question 19

What is the AWS CI/CD pipeline toolchain?

Answer 19

CodeCommit (Git repo) → CodeBuild (build/test) → CodeDeploy (deploy) – all orchestrated by CodePipeline.

Question 20

What is AWS CodeCommit?

Answer 20

Managed Git-based source control repository service. Fully managed, secure.

Question 21

What is AWS CodeBuild?

Answer 21

Fully managed CI build service. Compiles code, runs tests, and produces build artefacts. No servers to manage.

Question 22

What is AWS CodeDeploy?

Answer 22

Automated application deployment service. Deploys to EC2, Lambda, on-premises servers, and ECS.

Question 23

What is AWS CodePipeline?

Answer 23

CI/CD pipeline orchestration service. Automates the build, test, and deploy phases using CodeCommit, CodeBuild, and CodeDeploy.

Question 24

What is AWS CodeArtifact?

Answer 24

Managed artefact repository for software packages (npm, Maven, pip, NuGet, etc.).

Question 25

What is AWS Cloud9?

Answer 25

Cloud-based IDE running in a browser. Built-in AWS CLI, debugger, and terminal. Pre-configured with AWS credentials. Supports pair programming (share environment). No local install required.

Question 26

What is AWS X-Ray?

Answer 26

Distributed tracing service for analysing and debugging distributed applications. Identifies bottlenecks, errors, and performance issues across services.

Question 27

What is AWS CloudShell?

Answer 27

A browser-based shell accessible directly from the AWS Management Console. Pre-authenticated, no setup required.

Question 28

What is Amazon WorkSpaces?

Answer 28

Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) as a service – managed Windows or Linux desktops in the cloud (DaaS). Pay per month or per hour. Accessible from any device. Use case: remote work, BYOD, replace physical desktops.

Question 29

What is Amazon AppStream 2.0?

Answer 29

Streams desktop applications to users' web browsers. The application runs in AWS, not on the user's device.

Question 30

What is AWS Amplify?

Answer 30

Full-stack development platform for web and mobile apps. CI/CD hosting, authentication (Cognito), APIs (AppSync/API Gateway), storage (S3). Use case: React/Next.js/Vue apps with an AWS backend.

Question 31

What is Amazon Cognito?

Answer 31

User identity and access management for web/mobile apps. User Pools: authentication (sign-up/sign-in/user directory). Identity Pools: grant AWS credentials to authenticated users. Supports social sign-in (Google, Facebook, Amazon), SAML, OIDC.

Question 32

What is AWS AppSync?

Answer 32

Managed GraphQL service for building APIs that interact with multiple data sources.

Question 33

What is AWS Device Farm?

Answer 33

Tests web and mobile applications on real physical devices in the AWS cloud.

Question 34

What is Amazon Connect?

Answer 34

Cloud-based contact centre service. Inbound/outbound voice, chat, and tasks. Set up in minutes. Pay per minute used. Integrates with Lambda, Lex (chatbot), and CRM systems.

Question 35

What is Amazon SES (Simple Email Service)?

Answer 35

High-volume bulk email sending and transactional email service. Cost-effective for marketing and application emails.

Question 36

What is Amazon Pinpoint?

Answer 36

Multi-channel marketing communications service – email, SMS, push notifications, and voice. Used for targeted campaigns and engagement.

Question 37

What is Amazon WorkMail?

Answer 37

Managed business email and calendar service compatible with Microsoft Outlook.

Question 38

What is AWS IoT Core?

Answer 38

Connects and manages billions of IoT devices at scale using MQTT, HTTP, and WebSocket protocols. Device Shadow: virtual representation of device state. Rules engine: routes messages to AWS services.

Question 39

What is AWS IoT Greengrass?

Answer 39

Extends AWS compute, data caching, messaging, and ML to edge devices for local processing even without internet connectivity.

Question 40

What are the other IoT services?

Answer 40

IoT Analytics: analyse IoT data. | IoT Device Defender: audit and monitor IoT security. | IoT SiteWise: collect data from industrial equipment. | IoT Events: detect and respond to IoT device events.