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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

130 questions.

  1. Data Access Models beginner

    An analyst can query the customer table. A regulator asks whether she was allowed to use it for the marketing model she built. Role-based access answers one of those questions and not the other. What is the difference between role-, attribute- and purpose-based access, and what does purpose add?

    2 min answer rbacabacpurpose-limitationaccess-control
  2. Data Classification beginner Multiple choice

    A support tool shows `**** **** **** 4242`. A product manager asks to display the full card number for identity verification. The database stores the full number encrypted with a managed key. Which change actually reduces PCI DSS scope?

    2 min answer pci-dsstokenisationtruncationclassification
  3. Data Migration Strategies beginner

    A 6 TB order history must be backfilled into a new store before cutover. The link sustains 1 Gbps and the target ingests about 40 MB/s per writer. Roughly how long is the backfill, and which assumption decides whether it fits one weekend?

    2 min answer backfillcapacity-planningmigrationiops
  4. Data Quality Dimensions beginner Multiple choice

    A supplier table has 12% of rows with a blank tax identifier and 3% where the identifier is present but does not match the registry. Both are called data quality issues in the same report. Why does separating them change who is asked to fix them?

    2 min answer data qualitycompletenessaccuracyownership
  5. Database Migration beginner Multiple choice

    A team plans to move 2.5 TB to a new database by taking the application offline at 22:00 on Saturday, restoring a backup into the new store, and switching over by 08:00 Sunday. The data copies fine in a test at one tenth the volume. Why does this plan usually fail before it is executed?

    3 min answer cutoverrestorerollbackmaintenance window
  6. Dead Letter Handling beginner Multiple choice

    A platform team sets one default for every stream consumer: retry a failing record three times then route it to a dead-letter topic and carry on. The ledger team's consumer derives account balances from ordered per-account events. What trade-off does that default make on their behalf and what should they run instead?

    3 min answer dead letterorderingavailabilitycorrectness
  7. Architecture Decision-Making beginner

    When is an architectural decision worth an ADR, and what makes an ADR useful two years later?

    2 min answer adrdocumentationgovernance
  8. Decommissioning beginner Multiple choice

    A replaced invoicing system has had no inbound API traffic for 45 days and no user logins for 60. The team is ready to switch it off. One engineer notices that the old system still allocates the sequential invoice numbers the general ledger expects to be gapless. What must happen before shutdown?

    3 min answer decommissioningdependenciesidentifiersshutdown
  9. Delivery & Release Engineering beginner

    Your pipeline promotes one container digest from staging to production, and the team says production therefore runs exactly what was tested. The deployment chart values, the feature-flag defaults and the migration set are each resolved fresh at deploy time. Why is the promotion claim false, and what is the smallest change that makes it true?

    3 min answer promotionrelease-unitconfigurationfeature-flags
  10. Delivery vs Maintainability beginner Multiple choice

    A team has three weeks to launch and has agreed that exactly one corner will be cut. Four candidates are on the table. Which shortcut is the safe one to take?

    3 min answer technical-debtidentifiersdata-modelreversibility
  11. Design Systems beginner Multiple choice

    Two applications in the same company ship what should be the same primary button, and after a rebrand the shades differ by one step. A third application's button is the old colour entirely. What is the underlying cause, and which change prevents recurrence?

    3 min answer design-tokensdesign-systemsdriftgovernance
  12. Dimensional Modelling beginner Multiple choice

    An order-lines fact table holds 40 million rows per day for three years across 18 columns and is partitioned by order date. In Parquet it averages roughly 36 bytes per row compressed and columns are of similar width. A dashboard query reads three columns over the last 90 days. Roughly how many bytes does it scan?

    2 min answer estimationcolumnarpartition-pruningstar-schema