Google PCA Practice Question: Analysing and Optimising Technical and Business Processes
A company needs to store petabytes of time-series IoT sensor data and query it with single-digit millisecond latency at millions of reads per second. The data has a simple key-value structure with timestamps. Which Google Cloud database is MOST appropriate?
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
✓
Cloud Bigtable
Cloud Bigtable is designed for petabyte-scale, low-latency, high-throughput NoSQL storage for time-series, IoT, and financial data. It scales horizontally by adding nodes. BigQuery is an analytics warehouse with seconds-to-minutes latency, Cloud SQL is for OLTP with limited QPS, and Firestore is for document data with hierarchical structure.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✗
BigQuery
Why it's wrong here
BigQuery is an analytics data warehouse with query latency in seconds, not for millisecond lookups at IoT scale.
- ✗
Firestore
Why it's wrong here
Firestore is a document database for mobile/web apps with hierarchical data, not for IoT time-series at high QPS.
- ✓
Cloud Bigtable
Why this is correct
Bigtable is the correct choice: wide-column NoSQL, designed for time-series and IoT, single-digit ms latency, scales to millions of QPS.
- ✗
Cloud Spanner
Why it's wrong here
Spanner is a globally distributed relational database for ACID transactions, not single-digit ms time-series reads at millions of QPS.
Go deeper
Related to this question
Learn chapter
Introduction to Google Cloud Platform
Key term
BigQuery
BigQuery is a fully managed, serverless data warehouse on Google Cloud that lets you run fast SQL queries on massive datasets without managing any infrastructure.
Key term
Cloud SQL
Cloud SQL is a fully managed relational database service that lets you set up, maintain, and scale SQL databases (like MySQL, PostgreSQL, and SQL Server) in the cloud without managing the underlying infrastructure.
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JA
Written by Johnson Ajibi, MSc IT Security
Senior Network & Security Engineer · founder of Courseiva
This PCA practice question is part of Courseiva's free Google Cloud 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 PCA exam.