DBS-C01 Workload-Specific Database Design Practice Question
A company is designing a social media application that requires storing user relationships (follows) and making graph queries like 'mutual friends.' Which database is most suitable?
⚠ Common exam trap
Candidates often choose DynamoDB for its scalability and low latency, overlooking that graph queries like 'mutual friends' require native graph traversal capabilities that DynamoDB's key-value model cannot efficiently provide.
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. It supports both property graph and RDF models, and it uses Gremlin or SPARQL to efficiently traverse relationships like 'mutual friends' in a social media application, making it the ideal choice for graph 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 ElastiCache for Redis
Why it's wrong here
ElastiCache can store graphs but lacks native graph query capabilities.
- ✗
Amazon DynamoDB
Why it's wrong here
DynamoDB is not efficient for graph traversals.
- ✓
Amazon Neptune
Why this is correct
Neptune is a graph database optimized for highly connected data and graph queries.
- ✗
Amazon RDS for MySQL
Why it's wrong here
RDS requires complex join queries for graph data, which are inefficient.
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