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Difficulty: HardAWS Database Services

An educational technology company is building an online learning platform. The platform has two key database requirements:

1. It must store student course enrollments, grade books, and academic transcripts in a relational schema that supports multi-table SQL queries and strict transactional integrity.
2. It must store transient user session tokens and session state in-memory to ensure sub-millisecond page response times.

Which two AWS services should the company select to meet these requirements?

  1. Amazon RDSAnswer
  2. Amazon ElastiCacheAnswer
  3. C
    Amazon DynamoDB
  4. D
    Amazon Redshift
  5. E
    Amazon S3

Answer

The correct services are the relational database service and the in-memory data store. Specifically, Amazon RDS should be chosen for the relational transactional enrollment data, and Amazon ElastiCache should be chosen for sub-millisecond in-memory session caching.
The system requires a transactional relational database for enrollments and grades, which is best served by a managed relational database service. It also requires an in-memory caching tier to store transient session state under sub-millisecond latencies, which is the primary use case for an in-memory caching service.

Step-by-Step Solution

1
Analyze the first requirement: transactional enrollment data, relational schema, and multi-table SQL queries.
Identify that a relational database service is required. Amazon RDS meets this requirement.
Relational databases provide ACID transactions, foreign keys, and SQL join capabilities.
2
Analyze the second requirement: transient user session tokens and in-memory storage for sub-millisecond response times.
Identify that an in-memory caching service is required. Amazon ElastiCache meets this requirement.
In-memory stores keep data in RAM to bypass disk-based database latencies, offering sub-millisecond performance.
3
Evaluate the other options to verify they do not fit either primary requirement.
Excluding Amazon DynamoDB (NoSQL, no complex SQL joins), Amazon Redshift (OLAP data warehouse, not OLTP), and Amazon S3 (object storage, not low-latency database/cache).
Using the correct tool for each workload aligns with AWS architectural best practices (loose coupling and purpose-built databases).

Key Concept

Selecting purpose-built AWS database services based on relational, NoSQL, data warehousing, and caching requirements.
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Topics

AWS Database Services

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