DVA-C02 Development with AWS Services Practice Question
A Lambda function connects to an RDS database and causes too many database connections during traffic spikes. Which service should be introduced?
⚠ Common exam trap
The trap here is that candidates might confuse AWS WAF (a web firewall) or Route 53 (DNS) with database connection management, or incorrectly think that Glue Data Catalog can somehow cache or pool database connections, when in fact only RDS Proxy directly addresses the connection scaling issue for Lambda and RDS.
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 RDS Proxy
Amazon RDS Proxy sits between your Lambda function and the RDS database, managing a pool of established database connections. During traffic spikes, Lambda can rapidly scale up concurrent executions, each potentially opening a new database connection, which can exhaust the database's maximum connections. RDS Proxy reuses connections from the pool, reducing the number of open connections and preventing database overload, while also improving connection handling efficiency for serverless applications.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✗
AWS Glue Data Catalog
Why it's wrong here
AWS Glue Data Catalog is a metadata repository for data lakes and data warehouses, storing table definitions, schemas, and data locations. It enables various AWS analytics services to query data but does not manage active database connections, connection pooling, or address database overload for transactional RDS databases directly from a Lambda function. Therefore, it is not suitable for optimizing Lambda-to-RDS connectivity issues.
- ✓
Amazon RDS Proxy
Why this is correct
Amazon RDS Proxy is a fully managed, highly available database proxy that significantly improves application resilience and scalability for RDS databases. It establishes and maintains a pool of database connections, reusing them efficiently for new application connections from services like Lambda. This reduces the overhead of establishing new connections, prevents Lambda's concurrent invocations from overwhelming the RDS database with too many open connections, and handles credential management securely.
- ✗
Amazon Route 53 Resolver
Why it's wrong here
Amazon Route 53 Resolver provides DNS resolution services for Amazon VPCs and on-premises networks, facilitating private DNS queries and conditional forwarding. While essential for resolving database endpoints, its primary function is name resolution, not managing database connection pooling, limiting concurrent connections, or mitigating database overload. It does not address the operational challenges of a Lambda function causing too many connections to an RDS database.
- ✗
AWS WAF
Why it's wrong here
AWS WAF (Web Application Firewall) protects web applications and APIs from common web exploits and bots by filtering malicious traffic based on defined rules. It operates at the application layer (Layer 7) and is typically deployed with services like CloudFront, ALB, or API Gateway. AWS WAF is designed for securing HTTP/HTTPS traffic and does not manage, optimize, or proxy direct database connections from a Lambda function to an RDS database.
Quick reference
Cloud Service Model Comparison
| Model | You Manage | Provider Manages | Examples |
|---|---|---|---|
| IaaS | OS, runtime, apps, data | Hardware, hypervisor, networking | EC2, Azure VMs, GCP Compute Engine |
| PaaS | Apps and data | OS, runtime, middleware, hardware | Elastic Beanstalk, Azure App Service |
| SaaS | Data and settings only | Everything else | Microsoft 365, Salesforce, Workday |
| FaaS / Serverless | Function code only | Infra, scaling, runtime | Lambda, Azure Functions, Cloud Run |
| CaaS | Containers and apps | Kubernetes, OS, hardware | EKS, AKS, GKE |
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Written by Johnson Ajibi, MSc IT Security
Senior Network & Security Engineer · founder of Courseiva
This DVA-C02 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 DVA-C02 exam.