Which AWS service can be used to create and manage a relational database?

The selected answer is AWS RDS (Relational Database Service), which is specifically designed for creating, managing, and scaling relational databases in the cloud. RDS supports multiple database engines, such as MySQL, PostgreSQL, MariaDB, Oracle, and Microsoft SQL Server, allowing users the flexibility to choose the one that best fits their application's needs.

AWS RDS automates many difficult administrative tasks, such as hardware provisioning, database setup, patching, and backups. This means that users can focus more on application development rather than management overhead. Moreover, RDS offers features such as read replicas for improved read performance and Multi-AZ deployments for high availability, which are crucial for operational reliability and data durability.

The other options, while valuable services in their own right, do not focus on relational databases. AWS DynamoDB is a NoSQL database service optimized for key-value and document data structures, which differs fundamentally from relational databases. AWS ElastiCache is primarily used for caching data in-memory to improve application response times but does not provide a relational database structure. AWS Redshift is a data warehousing service designed for complex analytical queries on large datasets and is not intended for traditional relational database use cases. Thus, AWS RDS stands out as the optimal