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 financial services company runs a high-frequency trading application that requires strong consistency, horizontal scalability, and low-latency transactions across multiple regions. Which Google Cloud database should they choose?
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, horizontally scalable relational database service designed for mission-critical applications like trading. Cloud SQL is not multi-region, Bigtable does not support SQL/ACID, and Firestore is not relational.
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
Why it's wrong here
Cloud SQL is not globally distributed and has limited scalability.
- ✓
Cloud Spanner
Why this is correct
Spanner offers global distribution, strong consistency, and horizontal scalability for high-frequency trading.
- ✗
Cloud Bigtable
Why it's wrong here
Bigtable does not support ACID transactions and is not relational.
- ✗
Firestore
Why it's wrong here
Firestore is a document database, not relational, and not designed for high-frequency trading.
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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.