6 Database Selection Case Studies Free Online FlashCards

What should guide database selection?

Choose a database by matching its data model and access patterns to requirements such as transactions, consistency, latency, availability, recovery, and operations.

When is RDS for PostgreSQL a sensible starting point?

Amazon RDS for PostgreSQL offers a managed service while retaining a familiar relational engine for SQL joins, constraints, and transactions.

How does Aurora support read scaling and failover?

Aurora separates shared cluster storage from database instances. Reader instances can serve read traffic, and a reader can take over if the primary becomes unavailable.

What kind of workload suits DynamoDB?

DynamoDB suits high-scale key-value or document access, such as retrieving or updating a cart by customer identifier.

What is Amazon Redshift best suited for?

Amazon Redshift suits large-scale analytical queries, such as aggregating years of business data for dashboards, rather than serving as the default database for application transactions.

How can an e-commerce system divide transaction and cart workloads?

Use Aurora or RDS for orders and inventory when relational constraints and transactions matter; use DynamoDB for carts or sessions with primarily key-based access.

What read-replica behavior must RDS applications account for?

RDS read replicas replicate asynchronously, so check whether replica lag is acceptable for queries routed to them.

Does an RDS Multi-AZ standby automatically scale reads?

A Multi-AZ standby intended for failover is not automatically a read-scaling replica; capabilities depend on the deployment type and engine.

What should be compared before choosing Aurora over RDS?

Compare Aurora and RDS using the actual engine, instance sizes, I/O profile, availability needs, and migration effort; Aurora is not automatically best or least costly.

How should DynamoDB keys and indexes be designed?

Design DynamoDB keys and indexes around known queries. For cart items, a customer ID partition key and item identifier sort key can support retrieving and updating a customer’s items.

What can a poorly distributed DynamoDB partition key cause?

Poorly distributed partition-key values can create hot partitions, so key design must account for how traffic is distributed.

What determines how fresh data is in an analytical warehouse?

Reporting freshness depends on the data-ingestion design. Define acceptable latency and operate the pipeline that delivers data to the warehouse.