DynamoDB is Amazon’s fully managed NoSQL database — no servers, no patching, single-digit millisecond responses at basically any scale. When a question mentions a key-value or document store that must be fast and hands-off, DynamoDB is usually the target.
What the exam tests
Know it’s NoSQL (not relational — that’s RDS), that it scales automatically, and the two capacity modes: on-demand for unpredictable traffic (pay per request) and provisioned for steady, predictable traffic (cheaper). Global Tables add multi-Region replication; Streams trigger Lambda on data changes.
Test yourself
A gaming app has wildly unpredictable traffic spikes and needs a database that scales instantly with no capacity planning. What fits best?
- RDS with a larger instance
- DynamoDB in on-demand mode
- DynamoDB in provisioned mode with fixed capacity
- Redshift
👉 Click to reveal the answer & explanation
Correct answer: B. DynamoDB on-demand absorbs spikes automatically with no provisioning. RDS (A) needs manual scaling and a relational model you don’t need; provisioned mode (C) risks throttling during unpredictable spikes; Redshift (D) is a data warehouse, not an app database.
Related topics
Amazon RDS · AWS Lambda · Amazon S3
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