DBS-C01 Workload-Specific Database Design Practice Question
A company is designing a database for a social media application that requires storing user profiles, posts, and follower relationships. The application needs low-latency queries for user timelines and social graph traversals. Which TWO AWS database services should the database specialist consider? (Choose TWO.)
⚠ Common exam trap
Watch out — candidates often choose Amazon RDS for MySQL (Option D) thinking relational databases can handle graph queries with joins, but they fail to recognize that Neptune provides native graph traversal performance that relational databases cannot match for deeply connected data.
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
✓
Amazon Neptune
Amazon Neptune is a fully managed graph database service optimized for storing and querying highly connected data, such as social graphs. It supports property graph and RDF models, enabling low-latency traversals of follower relationships and user timelines using Gremlin or SPARQL queries.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✗
Amazon Timestream
Why it's wrong here
Timestream is for time-series data, not social media.
- ✓
Amazon Neptune
Why this is correct
Neptune is a graph database purpose-built for social graph traversals.
- ✗
Amazon Redshift
Why it's wrong here
Redshift is a data warehouse, not suitable for real-time queries.
- ✗
Amazon RDS for MySQL
Why it's wrong here
RDS is relational and can be used but is not optimized for graph traversals.
- ✓
Amazon DynamoDB
Why this is correct
DynamoDB provides low-latency access for user profiles and posts.
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Written by Johnson Ajibi, MSc IT Security
Senior Network & Security Engineer · founder of Courseiva
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.