SAA-C03 Design High-Performing Architectures Practice Question
A read-heavy document portal repeatedly queries the same product catalogue data from DynamoDB with millisecond latency requirements. Which service can reduce read latency and table load? The team wants the control to be enforceable during normal operations.
⚠ Common exam trap
Watch out — candidates often confuse DAX with ElastiCache (which is a general-purpose cache but not DynamoDB-native) or assume that S3 Transfer Acceleration can improve DynamoDB read performance, when in fact DAX is the only AWS service purpose-built to cache DynamoDB reads with sub-millisecond latency.
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
✓
DynamoDB Accelerator (DAX)
DynamoDB Accelerator (DAX) is an in-memory cache specifically designed for DynamoDB that can reduce read latency from single-digit milliseconds to microseconds, while offloading read traffic from the underlying table. This directly addresses the read-heavy workload and millisecond latency requirements, and the team can enforce its use during normal operations by configuring the application to route reads through the DAX cluster endpoint.
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 Kinesis Data Firehose
Why it's wrong here
Firehose loads streaming data to destinations; it does not cache DynamoDB reads.
- ✗
S3 Transfer Acceleration
Why it's wrong here
Transfer Acceleration speeds S3 transfers, not DynamoDB queries.
- ✓
DynamoDB Accelerator (DAX)
Why this is correct
DAX is an in-memory cache for DynamoDB that reduces read latency for suitable access patterns.
- ✗
AWS Glue Data Catalog
Why it's wrong here
Glue catalog stores metadata for analytics, not application read caching.
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