Question 774 of 1,711
DEA-C01 Data Store Management Practice Question
Which THREE factors should a data engineer consider when choosing between Amazon RDS and Amazon DynamoDB for a new application? (Choose THREE.)
⚠ Common exam trap
Watch out — candidates often assume encryption at rest or multi-region DR are exclusive to one service, but both RDS and DynamoDB offer these features, making them irrelevant for choosing between the two.
Answer choices
Why each option matters
Answer the question above first, then reveal the full breakdown to understand why each option is right or wrong.
Correct answer & explanation
✓
Requirement for ACID transactions across multiple tables.
Amazon RDS (with engines like PostgreSQL or MySQL) supports ACID transactions across multiple tables, ensuring atomicity, consistency, isolation, and durability for complex operations. DynamoDB, while supporting transactions, is limited to a single AWS account and region, and its transactional API has constraints on item sizes and throughput, making RDS the better choice for multi-table ACID compliance.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✓
Requirement for ACID transactions across multiple tables.
Why this is correct
RDS offers full ACID; DynamoDB transactions are limited.
- ✓
Expected latency requirements for read/write operations.
Why this is correct
DynamoDB offers consistent low latency; RDS may vary.
- ✓
Need for complex joins and relationships.
Why this is correct
RDS supports SQL joins; DynamoDB does not.
- ✗
Ability to encrypt data at rest.
Why it's wrong here
Both services support encryption at rest.
- ✗
Support for multi-region disaster recovery.
Why it's wrong here
Both offer multi-AZ; DynamoDB Global Tables vs RDS cross-region read replicas.
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Same concept, more angles
1 more way this is tested on DEA-C01
These questions test the same concept from different angles. Work through them to make sure you can recognise it however the exam phrases it.
Variation 1. Which THREE factors should a data engineer consider when choosing between Amazon RDS and Amazon DynamoDB for a new application? (Choose three.)
hard- ✓ A.Whether the workload requires serverless scaling.
- ✓ B.Whether the data model is relational or key-value.
- C.Whether the data must be encrypted at rest by default.
- D.Whether the application requires VPC isolation.
- ✓ E.Whether the application needs to scale horizontally for high throughput.
Why A: Amazon RDS is a relational database service that requires provisioning and managing server capacity, while DynamoDB is a fully managed NoSQL key-value and document database that supports serverless scaling. Option A is correct because DynamoDB can automatically scale throughput capacity up or down based on traffic patterns, making it suitable for unpredictable workloads, whereas RDS requires manual scaling or the use of Auto Scaling with predefined policies.
Last reviewed: Jul 4, 2026
This DEA-C01 practice question is part of Courseiva's free Amazon Web Services certification practice question bank. Courseiva provides original exam-style practice questions with explanations, topic-based practice, mock exams, readiness tracking, and study analytics to help learners prepare for the DEA-C01 exam.
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