Exam Essentials

Understand the major differences between relational and nonrelational databases. Relational databases are designed for structured data that contains a defined number of attributes per record. They let you perform complex queries against a variety of dimensions, making them ideal for reporting and analytics. Nonrelational databases are designed for data that doesn’t follow a predictable structure. Each item in a nonrelational database must have a primary key, and you can query based on that key.

Know the vertical and horizontal scaling options for RDS. You can scale an RDS instance vertically by upgrading to a larger instance class to give it more processing power, memory, or disk or network throughput. You can also select provisioned IOPS SSD storage to ensure your instance always achieves the storage performance it needs. For horizontal scaling of reads, your only option is to use read replicas.

Be able to describe the components of RDS. An RDS deployment consists...