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 team wants to decouple the database layer and allow each microservice to own its data. Which design pattern should the team implement?
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 database-per-service pattern with each microservice having its own Amazon DynamoDB table or RDS instance.
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.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✗
Implement an event-driven architecture using Amazon SQS and AWS Lambda with CQRS.
Why it's wrong here
CQRS is useful for separating reads and writes but doesn't address database ownership per service.
- ✗
Deploy a read replica of the database for each microservice to offload queries.
Why it's wrong here
Read replicas do not give each service its own database; they still share the source.
- ✗
Use a single Amazon RDS instance with multiple schemas for each microservice.
Why it's wrong here
A shared database creates tight coupling and single point of failure, not decoupling.
- ✓
Use a database-per-service pattern with each microservice having its own Amazon DynamoDB table or RDS instance.
Why this is correct
Database-per-service ensures each microservice owns its data, enabling independent development and scaling.
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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.