Google PCA Practice Question: Analysing and Optimising Technical and Business Processes
A development team uses BigQuery for analytical queries. They want to reduce query costs for a large table that is frequently filtered by a date column and a customer_id column. Which TWO table design strategies will reduce the amount of data scanned? (Choose 2)
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
✓
Partition the table by date.
Partitioning by date limits scans to relevant partitions. Clustering on customer_id further organizes data within partitions for efficient filtering. Both reduce data scanned. Indexes and normalization are not applicable in BigQuery.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✓
Partition the table by date.
Why this is correct
Date partitioning allows queries to scan only relevant partitions.
- ✗
Create an index on customer_id.
Why it's wrong here
BigQuery does not use traditional indexes.
- ✗
Use wildcard tables with date suffixes.
Why it's wrong here
Wildcard tables are for querying multiple tables, not necessary if partitioning is used.
- ✗
Normalize the table into multiple tables.
Why it's wrong here
Normalization increases joins and does not reduce scanned data.
- ✓
Cluster the table on customer_id.
Why this is correct
Clustering improves filter performance by colocating data.
Go deeper
Related to this question
Learn chapter
Cloud SQL and Managed Data Stores
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
Table
A table is a structured collection of data organized into rows and columns, used in databases and spreadsheets to store and manage information efficiently.
About these practice questions
This PCA question is part of Courseiva's 955-question bank — original exam-style content with full explanations and wrong-answer analysis, never real exam questions or exam dumps. Learn why practice questions differ from exam dumps →
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.