Google PCA Practice Question: Analysing and Optimising Technical and Business Processes
A company runs a global application that requires strong consistency across regions for financial transactions. Which database should they choose?
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 Spanner
Cloud Spanner provides global strong consistency and horizontal scaling. Bigtable offers eventual consistency. Firestore provides strong consistency within a region but not globally. Cloud SQL is regional.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✗
Cloud SQL
Why it's wrong here
Cloud SQL is regional and does not natively support multi-region replication with strong consistency.
- ✗
Cloud Bigtable
Why it's wrong here
Bigtable offers eventual consistency, not strong consistency across regions.
- ✗
Firestore
Why it's wrong here
Firestore provides strong consistency only within a single region.
- ✓
Cloud Spanner
Why this is correct
Spanner provides globally distributed strong consistency with ACID transactions.
Go deeper
Related to this question
Learn chapter
Introduction to Google Cloud Platform
Key term
Cloud Spanner
Cloud Spanner is a fully managed, globally distributed relational database service from Google Cloud that combines the benefits of relational database structure with horizontal scalability and strong consistency.
Key term
Bigtable
Bigtable is Google's fully managed, scalable NoSQL database service designed for large analytical and operational workloads, handling petabytes of data with low latency.
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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.