Quiz
2627 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 areas2627
Architecture Fundamentals81
Distributed Systems101
Data Architecture90
Cloud Architecture77
Networking86
API & Integration Architecture78
Reliability & Resilience88
Observability81
Performance & Capacity Engineering90
Security Architecture85
Cost Architecture & FinOps82
Business Architecture93
Architecture Communication91
Enterprise Architecture91
Legacy Modernization82
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
53 questions in Legacy Modernization.
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Application Decomposition advanced
A legacy system has no clean boundaries to extract — one shared database, entangled modules, no tests. What is the first move, and in what order should capability be recovered?
3 min answer legacyseamscharacterisation-testsdecomposition -
Application Decomposition advanced
A platform decomposes a monolith into services. Which boundaries should be extracted first, and which extraction produces a distributed monolith?
2 min answer decompositionboundariescouplingdistributed-monolith -
Application Decomposition advanced
During a monolith decomposition, the new search service needs data owned by five other services. What do you do?
2 min answer airbnbdecompositiondata-ownershipcqrs -
Application Decomposition advanced
How would you identify where to split a large application, using evidence rather than opinion?
2 min answer decompositionchange-correlationseamsdata -
Coexistence Patterns advanced
A migration will take eighteen months, during which old and new systems both serve production. How should the coexistence period be designed?
2 min answer digitcoexistenceroutingconsistency -
Coexistence Patterns advanced
During a multi-year migration, old and new systems must coexist. Which coexistence patterns are sustainable and which accumulate debt?
2 min answer coexistencedual-writeownershipreconciliation -
Coexistence Patterns advanced
Eighteen months into a coexistence period, customer records are authoritative in the new system and order records are still authoritative in the old one. A refund credits the customer and cancels the order line. What happens the first time the credit commits and the cancellation is rejected?
3 min answer coexistencewrite ownershipsagascompensation -
Coexistence Patterns advanced
Your cutover plan says switch reads, then switch writes, then decommission. A reviewer asks what happens at 02:00 if the new store turns out to be wrong after writes have moved. What mechanism makes the write switch reversible, and what is the honest unavailability window?
3 min answer youtubevitesscutoverreverse-replication -
Cutover Planning advanced
Alibaba Cloud reported a peak of 583,000 orders per second during Singles' Day on 11 November 2020. Your own platform is far smaller but its annual peak is roughly 40 times a median day and its date is known a year in advance. How does that one fact reshape an eighteen-month migration plan?
3 min answer alibabapeak eventscutoverfreeze -
Data Migration Strategies advanced
A platform must migrate very large volumes of file data between storage systems. Which strategies apply, and what dominates the schedule?
2 min answer data-migrationbulk-transferverificationcutover -
Data Migration Strategies advanced
A shipping platform must migrate years of order and tracking data to a new store. What strategy handles both the historical bulk and the ongoing changes?
2 min answer shiprocketdata-migrationcdcbackfill -
Data Migration Strategies advanced
Month 1 of a migration, the reference tables for currency and tax class are copied to the new store and verified row for row. Month 9, a regulator forces a new tax class into the legacy system. Month 11, the new system starts rejecting about 1 order in 400 with a validation error nobody can reproduce in test. What failed, and which design decision made it possible?
3 min answer reference datadriftcoexistencevalidation