SAP-C02 Design for New Solutions Practice Question
A company is migrating a monolithic application to a microservices architecture on AWS. The application uses a relational database with complex queries. The company wants to reduce operational overhead and achieve high availability. Which database strategy should the company adopt for the microservices?
⚠ Common exam trap
Test-takers frequently assume a single shared database (Option D) is simpler and sufficient for high availability, overlooking the critical microservices principle of decentralized data management and the operational overhead of tight coupling.
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 separate Amazon RDS instance for each microservice
A microservices architecture requires database isolation to ensure loose coupling, independent scaling, and fault isolation. Using a separate Amazon RDS instance for each microservice allows each team to manage its own schema, optimize queries independently, and avoid a single point of failure, which aligns with the goal of reducing operational overhead and achieving high availability.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✗
Use Amazon RDS Proxy with a single database
Why it's wrong here
RDS Proxy does not address the shared database coupling.
- ✓
Use a separate Amazon RDS instance for each microservice
Why this is correct
Database-per-service pattern ensures loose coupling.
- ✗
Use Amazon DynamoDB for all microservices
Why it's wrong here
DynamoDB may not support complex relational queries.
- ✗
Use a single Amazon RDS instance shared across all microservices
Why it's wrong here
Shared database creates tight coupling and scaling issues.
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Same concept, more angles
1 more way this is tested on SAP-C02
These questions test the same concept from different angles. Work through them to make sure you can recognise it however the exam phrases it.
Variation 1. A company is migrating a monolithic application to a microservices architecture on AWS. The application uses a relational database with complex queries. The team wants to decouple the database layer and allow each microservice to own its data. Which design pattern should the team implement?
hard- A.Implement an event-driven architecture using Amazon SQS and AWS Lambda with CQRS.
- B.Deploy a read replica of the database for each microservice to offload queries.
- C.Use a single Amazon RDS instance with multiple schemas for each microservice.
- ✓ D.Use a database-per-service pattern with each microservice having its own Amazon DynamoDB table or RDS instance.
Why D: The database-per-service pattern ensures each microservice has its own database, promoting loose coupling and independent scaling. Option A is wrong because an event-driven architecture with CQRS is a separate pattern for handling commands and queries, not for database decoupling per service. Option B is wrong because read replicas are used to offload read traffic from a single database, not to provide each microservice its own data store. Option C is wrong because a single RDS instance with multiple schemas still results in a shared database, contradicting the goal of decoupling.
JA
Written by Johnson Ajibi, MSc IT Security
Senior Network & Security Engineer · founder of Courseiva
This SAP-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 SAP-C02 exam.