This DBS-C01 practice question tests your understanding of workload-specific database design. Read the scenario carefully and evaluate each option against the stated constraints before committing to an answer. After answering, compare your reasoning against the explanation and wrong-answer breakdown below. Once you have made your selection, read the full explanation to reinforce the concept and understand why each distractor is designed to mislead on exam day.
A company is building a social network application that needs to store user profiles, friend relationships, and a feed of posts. The feed queries are complex, involving graph traversals (e.g., friends of friends). Which database is best suited for the relationship data?
Clue words in this question
Noticing these words before you look at the options changes how you read each choice.
Clue: "best"
Why it matters: Signals that multiple options may be partially correct. Choose the option that most directly solves the exact problem described, not the one that sounds most complete.
Amazon DynamoDB
Why wrong: DynamoDB is not efficient for graph traversals like friends-of-friends.
Amazon RDS for MySQL
Why wrong: Relational databases can model graphs but with complex and slow recursive queries.
Amazon ElastiCache for Redis
Why wrong: ElastiCache is a cache, not a durable database for relationship data.
Amazon Neptune
Neptune is a graph database purpose-built for traversing relationships.
Answer choices
Answer the question above first, then reveal the full breakdown to understand why each option is right or wrong.
Correct answer & explanation
Amazon Neptune
Amazon Neptune is a fully managed graph database service optimized for storing and querying highly connected data. It supports both property graph and RDF models, and it uses graph traversal languages like Gremlin and SPARQL, making it ideal for complex friend-of-friend queries and social network relationship data.
Key principle: Answer the scenario, not the keyword: identify the specific constraint before choosing the most familiar-sounding option.
Answer analysis
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
Amazon DynamoDB
Why it's wrong here
DynamoDB is not efficient for graph traversals like friends-of-friends.
Amazon RDS for MySQL
Why it's wrong here
Relational databases can model graphs but with complex and slow recursive queries.
Amazon ElastiCache for Redis
Why it's wrong here
ElastiCache is a cache, not a durable database for relationship data.
Amazon Neptune
Why this is correct
Neptune is a graph database purpose-built for traversing relationships.
Clue confirmation
The clue word "best" in the question point toward this answer.
Related concept
Read the scenario before looking for a memorised answer.
Common exam traps
The trap here is that candidates often choose DynamoDB for its scalability or RDS for its familiarity with JOINs, failing to recognize that graph databases are purpose-built for relationship-heavy workloads and that the exam specifically tests the ability to match database types to query patterns.
Detailed technical explanation
Under the hood, Neptune uses a purpose-built storage engine that indexes vertices and edges for fast adjacency lookups, enabling O(1) traversal to neighbors. In contrast, relational databases rely on index nested-loop joins that scale poorly with traversal depth, often requiring N+1 query patterns. A real-world scenario where this matters is a social network's 'People You May Know' feature, which requires multi-hop traversals across millions of nodes; Neptune can execute such queries in milliseconds using Gremlin's repeat() step, while a relational database would degrade to minutes.
Key takeaway
Answer the scenario, not the keyword: identify the specific constraint before choosing the most familiar-sounding option.
Real-world example
A healthcare organisation deploys an application with a public-facing web tier and a private database tier. The database subnet has no public IP and only accepts connections from the web tier's security group. Questions like this test whether you can design cloud network isolation using VNets/VPCs, subnets, and security group rules.
What to study next
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FAQ
Workload-Specific Database Design — This question tests Workload-Specific Database Design — Read the scenario before looking for a memorised answer..
The correct answer is: Amazon Neptune — Amazon Neptune is a fully managed graph database service optimized for storing and querying highly connected data. It supports both property graph and RDF models, and it uses graph traversal languages like Gremlin and SPARQL, making it ideal for complex friend-of-friend queries and social network relationship data.
Identify which exam domain this question belongs to, review the core concept, then practise similar questions from the same domain.
Yes — watch for: "best". Signals that multiple options may be partially correct. Choose the option that most directly solves the exact problem described, not the one that sounds most complete.
Read the scenario before looking for a memorised answer.
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Last reviewed: Jun 24, 2026
This DBS-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 DBS-C01 exam.
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