hardMultiple SelectObjective-mapped
PCD Practice Question: An e-commerce platform uses Cloud Spanner for…
An e-commerce platform uses Cloud Spanner for transactions and Cloud Bigtable for session state and recommendations. They want to synchronize customer profile changes from Spanner to Bigtable in near real-time. Which three components should they use? (Choose 3)
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 change streams
Spanner change streams capture changes, Pub/Sub provides a scalable messaging channel, and Dataflow can transform and write to Bigtable. Cloud Functions could be used but are less suitable for high-throughput. Cloud Scheduler is batch-oriented.
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 Functions
Why it's wrong here
Could be used for simple tasks but not recommended for high-throughput streaming to Bigtable.
- ✗
Cloud Scheduler
Why it's wrong here
Scheduler is for batch jobs, not real-time streaming.
- ✓
Cloud Spanner change streams
Why this is correct
Captures real-time changes from Spanner.
- ✓
Cloud Dataflow
Why this is correct
Processes events and writes to Bigtable with transformations.
- ✓
Cloud Pub/Sub
Why this is correct
Receives change stream events and decouples producers/consumers.
Quick reference
Cloud Service Model Comparison
| Model | You Manage | Provider Manages | Examples |
|---|---|---|---|
| IaaS | OS, runtime, apps, data | Hardware, hypervisor, networking | EC2, Azure VMs, GCP Compute Engine |
| PaaS | Apps and data | OS, runtime, middleware, hardware | Elastic Beanstalk, Azure App Service |
| SaaS | Data and settings only | Everything else | Microsoft 365, Salesforce, Workday |
| FaaS / Serverless | Function code only | Infra, scaling, runtime | Lambda, Azure Functions, Cloud Run |
| CaaS | Containers and apps | Kubernetes, OS, hardware | EKS, AKS, GKE |
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JA
Written by Johnson Ajibi, MSc IT Security
Senior Network & Security Engineer · founder of Courseiva
This PCD 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 PCD exam.