Google PCA Practice Question: Analysing and Optimising Technical and Business Processes
A startup is building a real-time multiplayer game with global players. They need a database that provides strong consistency across regions and can handle millions of concurrent users. They anticipate rapid growth and want to avoid downtime for scaling. Which database service meets these requirements?
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 is a globally distributed, strongly consistent relational database with automatic horizontal scaling. It provides strong consistency across regions and can handle millions of transactions per second. Firestore is eventually consistent (or strong within a region) and not designed for relational data. Bigtable does not support strong consistency across regions. Cloud SQL is regional with limited scalability.
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 with cross-region replication
Why it's wrong here
Cloud SQL is regional; cross-region replication uses asynchronous replication, leading to eventual consistency and potential data loss. Also, Cloud SQL has scaling limits.
- ✓
Cloud Spanner
Why this is correct
Spanner provides global strong consistency, automatic scaling, and is designed for high-throughput OLTP workloads. It fits the requirements perfectly.
- ✗
Cloud Bigtable
Why it's wrong here
Bigtable is eventually consistent across regions and does not support strong consistency globally. It is not suitable for relational data or strong consistency needs.
- ✗
Cloud Firestore
Why it's wrong here
Firestore offers strong consistency within a region but eventual consistency across regions. It is not designed for relational data or global strong consistency.
Go deeper
Related to this question
Learn chapter
Introduction to Google Cloud Platform
Key term
Firestore
Firestore is a flexible, scalable, serverless NoSQL database from Google Cloud that automatically syncs data across applications in real time.
Key term
Scalability
Scalability is the ability of a system, network, or process to handle a growing amount of work by adding resources, either by making the existing resources more powerful (vertical scaling) or by adding more resources (horizontal scaling).
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