Google PCA Design and plan a cloud solution architecture Practice Question
A retail company is planning to move its on-premises data warehouse to Google Cloud. They need a fully managed, petabyte-scale analytics database that supports standard SQL and can ingest data in real time from Pub/Sub. They also want to minimize administration and cost. Which Google Cloud service should they choose?
⚠ Common exam trap
Candidates often confuse a transactional database like Cloud Spanner with an analytical data warehouse, or assuming that any scalable database can serve as a data warehouse.
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
✓
BigQuery
BigQuery is the correct choice because it is a fully managed, petabyte-scale analytics database that supports standard SQL and integrates with Pub/Sub for real-time data ingestion. It minimizes administration and offers cost-effective pricing, making it ideal for moving an on-premises data warehouse to Google Cloud.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✗
Bigtable
Why it's wrong here
Bigtable is a NoSQL wide-column database for high-throughput, low-latency workloads, not a SQL analytics warehouse. It does not support standard SQL queries or provide the same analytical capabilities as BigQuery. While it can scale to petabytes, it is not designed for data warehousing or real-time SQL analytics, so it does not meet the requirements.
- ✗
Cloud SQL for PostgreSQL
Why it's wrong here
Cloud SQL is a managed relational database but is not designed for petabyte-scale analytics workloads. It has storage limits and performance characteristics better suited for transactional applications. While it supports SQL, it lacks the massive scalability and built-in real-time ingestion from Pub/Sub that BigQuery provides. It would require significant administration for large-scale analytics.
- ✓
BigQuery
Why this is correct
BigQuery is a fully managed, petabyte-scale analytics data warehouse that supports standard SQL and integrates natively with Pub/Sub for real-time ingestion via the BigQuery Storage Write API or Dataflow. It eliminates infrastructure management and offers cost-effective pricing models. This directly matches the requirements for a managed, scalable analytics database with real-time ingestion.
- ✗
Cloud Spanner
Why it's wrong here
Cloud Spanner is a globally distributed, horizontally scalable relational database designed for transactional workloads with strong consistency. It supports SQL but is not optimized for petabyte-scale analytics or real-time ingestion from Pub/Sub. It is also more expensive and complex for pure analytics. BigQuery is the better fit for data warehousing and analytics.
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Key term
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A data warehouse is a central repository that stores large amounts of structured data from multiple sources, optimized for querying and analysis rather than day-to-day transactions.
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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.