Design innovative, scalable, and highly available cloud database solutions →easyMultiple ChoiceObjective-mapped
PCDE Practice Question: Design innovative, scalable, and highly available cloud database solutions
An engineer is designing a global inventory system that requires strong consistency across continents, with the ability to handle write conflicts and ensure ACID transactions. The system expects millions of reads and writes per second. Which Google Cloud database service meets these requirements?
⚠ Common exam trap
Many exam-takers confuse Firestore's strong consistency within a single region with global consistency, overlooking the need for ACID transactions and conflict resolution at planetary scale, which only Cloud Spanner provides.
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 the correct choice because it provides ACID transactions and strong consistency across globally distributed regions, using TrueTime and synchronous replication to handle write conflicts at scale. It is designed for millions of reads and writes per second while maintaining external consistency, making it ideal for a global inventory system.
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 Bigtable
Why it's wrong here
Bigtable provides strong consistency but does not support ACID transactions across rows.
- ✗
Cloud SQL
Why it's wrong here
Cloud SQL does not provide global distribution.
- ✗
Firestore
Why it's wrong here
Firestore has strict throughput limits and is not designed for millions of writes per second.
- ✓
Cloud Spanner
Why this is correct
Spanner offers global strong consistency, ACID transactions, and horizontal scaling.
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JA
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.