SAA-C03 Design High-Performing Architectures Practice Question
A DynamoDB table for a travel booking site has a partition key based only on the current date. Write throttling occurs during business hours. What is the best design change? The architecture review board prefers a managed AWS-native control.
⚠ Common exam trap
Many candidates confuse a GSI as a solution for write performance, when in fact GSIs only help with read query patterns and do not alleviate write hot spots on the base table.
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
✓
Use a higher-cardinality partition key that distributes writes across partitions
Using a low-cardinality partition key like the current date causes all writes to land on a single partition, leading to throttling. By choosing a higher-cardinality partition key (e.g., combining date with a user ID or booking ID), writes are distributed evenly across multiple partitions, leveraging DynamoDB's internal partitioning to handle the throughput. This is a managed, AWS-native design change that resolves hot partition issues without additional services.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✗
Create a global secondary index with the same date key
Why it's wrong here
A GSI with the same hot key can suffer the same partition problem.
- ✗
Move the table to S3 Glacier Instant Retrieval
Why it's wrong here
S3 Glacier is object storage and not a DynamoDB write scaling solution.
- ✗
Reduce the table's write capacity
Why it's wrong here
Reducing capacity worsens throttling.
- ✓
Use a higher-cardinality partition key that distributes writes across partitions
Why this is correct
A low-cardinality hot partition causes throttling; a better key spreads writes more evenly.
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