Question where using Redshift is more cost effective than Quicksight

[paul10101]

I don’t understand the correct answer options for a question in the Timed Mode Set 1 quiz:

A manufacturing company uses Amazon S3 as a data lake for collecting records from multiple sources. The company’s sales team frequently analyzes data from the past three months.

Moreover, the company generates a semi-annual report that includes data from the past six months. Even though there will be no further access to data older than 6 months, the company must retain it to comply with its data retention policy.

Which of the solutions will meet these requirements MOST cost-effectively? (Select TWO).

One of the 2 correct options is:

“Create a job that automatically copies the last three months of data to Amazon Redshift and unloads data older than three months to Amazon S3. Use Amazon Redshift Spectrum to include the 6 months of data for semi-annual analysis.”

I understand that this option works, but how is this cost effective to add Redshift? An incorrect answer option:
“Implement Amazon QuickSight to analyze all the data stored in the S3 Data lake. Configure the QuickSight to go directly to the S3 data lake to enable real-time analytics of all the data.”
The explanation for this being incorrect is “However, there might be better options for complex analytical queries, especially for large datasets like Data Lakes. There are more cost-effective ways to analyze the data than this one.”

How is Quicksight less cost effective than having Redshift? Also, the question doesn’t make a comment about the size of the dataset, or the dataset being too complex for Quicksight to handle.

[JR-TutorialsDojo]

Hello paul10101,

Thanks for the feedback.

The reason Amazon QuickSight isn’t the most cost-effective choice here has less to do with its capabilities and more to do with how it’s typically used and priced.

QuickSight is a visualization tool, not a query engine. While it can connect directly to S3 via Athena or other sources, it doesn’t optimize storage or query costs on its own.

I hope this helps!

Let us know if you need further assistance.

Best regards,
JR @ Tutorials Dojo