Design innovative, scalable, and highly available cloud database solutions →mediumMultiple ChoiceObjective-mapped
PCDE Practice Question: Design innovative, scalable, and highly available cloud database solutions
An e-commerce platform uses Cloud SQL for PostgreSQL to manage orders. The application team reports that the database experiences performance degradation during peak hours due to high connection churn. They want to maintain a pool of established connections. Which configuration change addresses this without application code changes?
⚠ Common exam trap
Google Cloud exams often test the misconception that increasing or decreasing max_connections alone can solve connection churn, when in reality connection pooling (like pgBouncer) is the correct solution to reduce overhead without application changes.
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
✓
Enable the pgBouncer flag to use transaction pooling.
Enabling the pgBouncer flag in Cloud SQL for PostgreSQL provides a built-in connection pooler that maintains persistent connections to the database, reducing the overhead of frequent connection establishment. pgBouncer operates in transaction pooling mode, which allows multiple client connections to share a smaller pool of backend connections, directly addressing high connection churn without requiring any application code changes.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✗
Reduce the max_connections flag to force the application to reuse connections.
Why it's wrong here
Reducing max_connections would cause connection failures, not encourage reuse.
- ✗
Increase the max_connections flag to a higher value.
Why it's wrong here
Increasing max_connections can alleviate connection limit issues but does not reduce churn; it may increase resource contention.
- ✗
Switch to Cloud SQL for MySQL, which has built-in connection pooling.
Why it's wrong here
Migrating databases is not a configuration change and MySQL does not have built-in pooling; both PostgreSQL and MySQL require external poolers.
- ✓
Enable the pgBouncer flag to use transaction pooling.
Why this is correct
PgBouncer provides connection pooling, reusing connections and reducing churn, without application changes.
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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.