Question

Difficulty: MediumAWS Database Services

A company is migrating its customer order processing system to AWS. The system requires a relational database that supports standard SQL queries and transactional integrity (ACID compliance). The company wants to minimize administrative overhead by offloading operating system patching and database backups to AWS. They also want to avoid a monolithic design where transactional processing and historical data analytics are combined into a single database. Which AWS service should the company use to host the transactional database?

  1. A
    Amazon DynamoDB
  2. Amazon RDSAnswer
  3. C
    Amazon EBS
  4. D
    Amazon Redshift

Answer

Amazon RDS
Amazon RDS is the correct choice because it is a managed relational database service that supports standard SQL and ACID transactions. It automatically handles administrative tasks like operating system patching and database backups, allowing the company to offload these operational responsibilities while maintaining a relational database structure.

Step-by-Step Solution

1
Identify the data model and transactional requirements of the application.
The application requires a relational database that supports standard SQL queries and ACID compliance.
This narrows the choice to relational database services like Amazon RDS, eliminating non-relational options like Amazon DynamoDB.
2
Evaluate the management and administrative requirements.
The database must minimize administrative overhead by offloading operating system patching and backups to AWS.
This eliminates self-managed options like hosting a database on Amazon EC2 using Amazon EBS, where the customer remains responsible for OS patching and database backups.
3
Apply loose coupling principles to separate transactional and analytical workloads.
The transactional database should be kept separate from the historical analytics warehouse.
This rules out Amazon Redshift, which is optimized for data warehousing (OLAP) rather than transactional processing (OLTP), ensuring the workloads are decoupled.

Key Concept

AWS Database Services
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