Design innovative, scalable, and highly available cloud database solutions →mediumMultiple ChoiceObjective-mapped
PCDE Practice Question: Design innovative, scalable, and highly available cloud database solutions
A data engineering team needs to run complex analytical queries on terabytes of data stored in Cloud Storage. The queries are ad-hoc and require scanning large portions of the dataset. The team needs a serverless solution that optimizes for cost by charging only for the data processed. Which Google Cloud service should they use?
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 data warehouse that uses columnar storage and charges for the data scanned by queries. It is ideal for ad-hoc analytical queries on large datasets.
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 a serverless data warehouse with pay-per-query pricing, suited for ad-hoc analytics.
- ✗
Dataproc
Why it's wrong here
Dataproc is a managed Spark/Hadoop service that requires cluster management, not serverless.
- ✗
Cloud SQL
Why it's wrong here
Cloud SQL is not designed for analytical queries on terabytes of data and is not serverless.
- ✗
Cloud Spanner
Why it's wrong here
Spanner is for transactional workloads, not 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.