Google PCA Practice Question: Managing and Provisioning a Solution Infrastructure
A healthcare company is migrating a legacy on-premises Oracle database to Google Cloud. The database is used for a patient records application that requires strong consistency, ACID transactions, and a relational schema with complex joins. The company wants a fully managed, highly available relational database service that minimizes administrative overhead while supporting their existing SQL workloads. Which Google Cloud service should they choose?
⚠ Common exam trap
The trap here is assuming that a globally distributed database like Cloud Spanner is always the best choice for relational workloads, when in fact it may be overkill and incompatible with existing Oracle SQL syntax.
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 SQL for PostgreSQL
Cloud SQL for PostgreSQL is the best choice because it provides a fully managed relational database with ACID compliance, strong consistency, and support for complex SQL queries, matching the legacy Oracle workload's needs. It reduces operational burden with automated backups, replication, and high availability. Other options are either NoSQL databases lacking relational features or overly complex for the required scale.
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 Spanner
Why it's wrong here
Cloud Spanner is a globally distributed, horizontally scalable relational database that provides strong consistency and ACID transactions, but it is designed for massive scale and global deployments. For a legacy Oracle application with moderate scale, Spanner introduces unnecessary complexity and cost. Additionally, Spanner does not support all PostgreSQL or Oracle SQL syntax, so migrating existing queries may require significant refactoring, making it less suitable here.
- ✗
Bigtable
Why it's wrong here
Bigtable is a fully managed NoSQL wide-column database optimized for high-throughput, low-latency workloads with massive datasets. It does not support ACID transactions across rows or complex SQL joins, which are essential for the patient records application. Bigtable is not relational, so migrating an Oracle schema directly would require a complete redesign, making it inappropriate for this scenario.
- ✗
Firestore
Why it's wrong here
Firestore is a NoSQL document database designed for mobile, web, and server development, offering real-time synchronization and offline support. It lacks support for complex SQL queries, joins, and multi-row ACID transactions, which are critical for the legacy patient records application. Firestore is not a relational database, so it cannot directly replace Oracle without significant application changes, making it a poor fit.
- ✓
Cloud SQL for PostgreSQL
Why this is correct
Cloud SQL for PostgreSQL is a fully managed relational database service that supports ACID transactions, complex joins, and strong consistency, making it ideal for migrating Oracle workloads that require a relational schema. It handles replication, backups, and patching automatically, reducing administrative overhead. The service supports high availability configurations with automatic failover, aligning with the healthcare application's requirements for uptime and data integrity.
Go deeper
Related to this question
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Google Cloud Compute Options Overview
Key term
Relational database
A relational database organizes data into tables with rows and columns, where each table relates to others using unique keys, allowing efficient storage, retrieval, and manipulation of structured information.
Key term
High availability
High availability is a system design approach that aims to keep applications and services operational and accessible with minimal downtime, even when some components fail.
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JA
Written and reviewed by Johnson Ajibi, MSc IT Security
Senior Network & Security Engineer · founder of Courseiva
Last reviewed September 2026 · checked against the official Google Cloud exam blueprint
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.