Which AWS Services Support Atomic Multi-Item Transactions?

DVA-C02 By islever Editorial Last updated

Short answer

CD Amazon DynamoDB with reads and writes made by using Transact* operations Amazon Aurora MySQL with operations made within a transaction block

Question

A gaming website gives users the ability to trade game items with each other on the platform. The platform requires both users' records to be updated and persisted in one transaction. If any update fails, the transaction must roll back. Which AWS solutions can provide the transactional capability that is required for this feature? (Choose two.)
  1. Amazon DynamoDB with operations made with the ConsistentRead parameter set to true
  2. Amazon ElastiCache for Memcached with operations made within a transaction block
  3. Amazon DynamoDB with reads and writes made by using Transact* operations Correct Answer
  4. Amazon Aurora MySQL with operations made within a transaction block Correct Answer
  5. Amazon Athena with operations made within a transaction block

Key Takeaways

The question distinguishes between strongly consistent reads and true atomic transactions; DynamoDB's ConsistentRead only ensures read consistency, not transactional writes.

The question tests knowledge of AWS transactional database capabilities. Community consensus confirms both Amazon DynamoDB (via Transact* APIs) and Amazon Aurora MySQL (via SQL transaction blocks) provide the required atomic multi-item updates.

Common mistake: Choosing option A (ConsistentRead) is the most common mistake because it sounds transaction-like, but it only affects read consistency, not atomic batch writes across items.

Expert Analysis

Why the Answer Is Correct

Option C is correct because DynamoDB's TransactWriteItems and TransactGetItems APIs provide all-or-nothing atomic operations across multiple items in one or more tables. Option D is correct because Aurora MySQL is a relational database that supports full ACID transactions using SQL statements like BEGIN, COMMIT, and ROLLBACK. These services meet the requirement of updating both user records in a single transaction with rollback on failure.

Why the Other Options Are Wrong

Option A is wrong because ConsistentRead=true only ensures strongly consistent reads of a single item, not transactional atomicity across multiple updates. Option B is wrong because ElastiCache for Memcached does not support multi-key transactions or rollback. Option E is wrong because Athena is an interactive query service for data in S3, not a transactional database.

Community Comment Notes

All commenters selected CD, and the top comment linked to the official DynamoDB transaction APIs documentation. The consensus reinforces that transactional capability requires services like DynamoDB Transact* and Aurora, not just read consistency or caching mechanisms.

Official Reference

These links open the official vendor documentation in a new tab.

Exam Strategy

When you see a requirement for 'transaction rollback' with multiple records, look for services that explicitly offer atomic multi-item operations: DynamoDB Transact* APIs or relational databases like Aurora/RDS supporting SQL transactions. Avoid options that mention 'consistent reads' or in-memory caches, as they do not guarantee atomicity.

Community Votes

CD
100%

100% of anonymous learners picked answer CD. Votes are pick records left by other test-takers — they are not the verified answer.

Discussion 3 contributions

Compiled from public community threads and reader submissions, lightly edited for clarity. Handles and vote tallies are shown as recorded, and comments reflect the views of individual contributors.

From public community threads 3

  1. KarBiswa 👍 3
    https://docs.aws.amazon.com/amazondynamodb/latest/developerguide/transaction-apis.html
  2. 65703c1 👍 2
    CD is the correct answer.
  3. seetpt 👍 2
    CD is right

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