SAA-C03 - Design High-Performing Architectures - Section 3.5

Determine high-performing database solutions by selecting relational and purpose-built databases such as Amazon RDS, Amazon Aurora and Amazon DynamoDB.

Compare Amazon RDS managed relational databases, Amazon Aurora's cloud-native engine with up to five times the throughput of standard MySQL, and Amazon DynamoDB's managed NoSQL key-value and document store. Recognise when a purpose-built database such as Amazon Neptune for graph data, Amazon Timestream for time-series, or Amazon OpenSearch Service for full-text search suits an access pattern better than a relational engine.

Amazon AuroraAmazon DynamoDBAmazon RDSPurpose-built databases

Practice question for this objective

Free sampleDesign High-Performing Architectureshard

A solutions architect is choosing purpose-built databases for two new workloads in the same platform. The first stores hierarchical, schema-flexible product documents queried by attribute with single-digit millisecond latency at very large scale. The second must answer queries that walk many connected relationships, such as which accounts ultimately funded a given transaction through chains of intermediaries. The team wants a fully managed AWS service that fits each access pattern natively rather than forcing both onto one relational engine. Which two services correctly match these workloads? Select TWO.

  • AAmazon Redshift for the schema-flexible product documents, using its columnar storage to serve low-latency lookups
  • BAmazon DynamoDB for the schema-flexible product documents queried at scale with single-digit millisecond latency Correct
  • CAmazon RDS for PostgreSQL for the relationship traversal, relying on recursive multi-table joins across intermediaries
  • DAmazon Neptune for the queries that traverse many connected relationships between funding accounts and intermediaries Correct
  • EAmazon ElastiCache for the schema-flexible product documents to provide the primary durable document store
Match purpose-built AWS databases to access patterns: DynamoDB for low-latency flexible documents at scale and Neptune for connected-relationship traversal. The decisive requirements are access patterns. Single-digit millisecond document lookups at massive scale point to DynamoDB, while queries that walk chains of connected entities point to a graph engine, Neptune, whose traversal cost stays bounded where relational recursive joins balloon. Warehouse, relational, and cache services each solve a different problem and fail at least one stated requirement.

Why A is wrong: Redshift is a columnar data warehouse tuned for analytical scans, not single-item low-latency document lookups, so it is the wrong fit here.

Why B is correct: DynamoDB is a managed key-value and document store giving single-digit millisecond latency at very large scale, matching the flexible-document access pattern.

Why C is wrong: Recursive joins on a relational engine grow expensive as relationship depth increases, which is exactly the pattern a graph database is meant to replace.

Why D is correct: Neptune is a managed graph database built to traverse highly connected relationships efficiently, which suits the multi-hop funding-chain queries.

Why E is wrong: ElastiCache is an in-memory cache, not a durable primary document store, so using it as the system of record would risk data loss.

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