Design innovative, scalable, and highly available cloud database solutions →easyMultiple ChoiceObjective-mapped
PCDE Practice Question: Design innovative, scalable, and highly available cloud database solutions
A company needs to run complex analytical queries on large datasets (petabytes) with SQL support and high scalability. The data is stored in CSV files in Cloud Storage. Which Google Cloud service is MOST suitable?
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 a serverless, highly scalable, and cost-effective data warehouse designed for running analytical queries on large datasets. It can query data directly in Cloud Storage using external tables.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✓
BigQuery
Why this is correct
BigQuery is the correct service for large-scale analytical queries with SQL.
- ✗
Cloud Bigtable
Why it's wrong here
Bigtable is a NoSQL database, not designed for complex SQL analytics.
- ✗
Cloud SQL
Why it's wrong here
Cloud SQL is for OLTP, not petabyte-scale analytics.
- ✗
Cloud Spanner
Why it's wrong here
Spanner is for global OLTP, not for complex analytical queries.
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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Written by Johnson Ajibi, MSc IT Security
Senior Network & Security Engineer · founder of Courseiva
This PCDE 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 PCDE exam.