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Quiz

2667 questions of the kind that actually get asked — in interviews, in architecture review boards, and by the person who has to run the thing at 3 AM. Every answer states the trade-off rather than the slogan, and says when the obvious choice is the wrong one.

All areas2667 Architecture Fundamentals81 Distributed Systems101 Data Architecture90 Cloud Architecture87 Networking86 API & Integration Architecture78 Reliability & Resilience88 Observability81 Performance & Capacity Engineering90 Security Architecture95 Cost Architecture & FinOps92 Business Architecture93 Architecture Communication91 Enterprise Architecture91 Legacy Modernization92 AI-Era Architecture86 Software Architecture & Engineering84 Architecture Patterns84 Architecture Decision-Making91 The Architect's Meta-Skills92 Delivery & Release Engineering93 Platform Engineering & Developer Experience92 Testing & Quality Architecture90 Data Platform Architecture88 Streaming & Real-Time Data93 Data Governance & Semantics81 Frontend & Experience Architecture91 Edge, Mobile & IoT88 Regulatory & Data Protection Architecture90 Assurance, Audit & Model Risk88
Difficulty Any beginner intermediate advanced

45 questions in Architecture Decision-Making.

  1. Serverless vs Containers advanced

    An image-derivative pipeline runs as functions: about 270 million invocations a month at roughly 1.8 seconds and 2 GB of memory each, costing about 16000 dollars a month at 2026 per-invocation prices. The team wants to move it to a container fleet on one-year reserved capacity. Give the sequence, say where output can diverge, and name the point of no return.

    3 min answer serverlesscontainersmigrationcost
  2. SQL vs NoSQL advanced

    A platform must choose between a relational database and a wide-column store for its highest-volume data. What decides it, and what is the common error?

    2 min answer sqlnosqlaccess-patternspartition-key
  3. SQL vs NoSQL advanced

    A startup with a few thousand users is choosing between a single-region Postgres and a geo-distributed serializable database. What evidence should drive the decision, and what would trigger revisiting it?

    3 min answer cockroachdbpostgresdistributed-sqlreversibility
  4. SQL vs NoSQL advanced

    By 2021 Notion's single Postgres database had reached the point where VACUUM stalled and transaction ID wraparound became a genuine risk. They sharded Postgres into 480 logical shards rather than moving block data to a NoSQL store. What forced the change, what decided the destination, and where would copying it be a mistake?

    2 min answer notionpostgresshardingvacuum
  5. SQL vs NoSQL advanced Multiple choice

    Figma's Postgres stack grew roughly 100x between 2020 and 2024. The team had already partitioned tables vertically and now needed horizontal scale for the largest tables. They evaluated distributed SQL engines including CockroachDB and TiDB and rejected all of them, then spent about nine months building their own sharding layer with a query proxy written in Go. Which fact best explains that choice?

    2 min answer figmapostgresshardingtechnology-selection
  6. Sync vs Async advanced

    A checkout flow makes 9 synchronous calls: inventory, pricing, tax, fraud, payment, loyalty, shipping, notification and analytics. What would you change?

    2 min answer checkoutcouplingavailabilitylatency
  7. Sync vs Async advanced

    An order API calls six services synchronously and takes 3 seconds at p95, failing whenever any dependency is degraded. Redesign it.

    2 min answer asyncavailabilityeventsoutbox
  8. Technology Selection advanced

    How would you evaluate a new database for a critical workload, and what would make you reject it despite good benchmarks?

    2 min answer technology-selectionevaluationoperabilityboring-technology
  9. Technology Selection advanced

    Three teams have independently chosen three different message brokers. Design the selection and governance process going forward.

    2 min answer technology-selectiongovernancepaved-roadstandards