AWS Certified Database – Specialty — Question 110

A company has an application that uses an Amazon DynamoDB table to store user data. Every morning, a single-threaded process calls the DynamoDB API Scan operation to scan the entire table and generate a critical start-of-day report for management. A successful marketing campaign recently doubled the number of items in the table, and now the process takes too long to run and the report is not generated in time.
A database specialist needs to improve the performance of the process. The database specialist notes that, when the process is running, 15% of the table's provisioned read capacity units (RCUs) are being used.
What should the database specialist do?

Answer options

• A. Enable auto scaling for the DynamoDB table.
• B. Use four threads and parallel DynamoDB API Scan operations.
• C. Double the table's provisioned RCUs.
• D. Set the Limit and Offset parameters before every call to the API.

Correct answer: B

Explanation

Using four threads with parallel DynamoDB API Scan operations allows the process to utilize multiple read capacity units simultaneously, significantly improving performance and reducing the time taken to generate the report. Enabling auto scaling (A) may help in the long run but does not immediately address the current performance issue. Doubling the provisioned RCUs (C) increases costs without necessarily improving efficiency, and setting Limit and Offset parameters (D) does not enhance the scan performance.