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2707 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 areas2707 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 Architecture96 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 Architecture98 Streaming & Real-Time Data93 Data Governance & Semantics91 Frontend & Experience Architecture91 Edge, Mobile & IoT88 Regulatory & Data Protection Architecture90 Assurance, Audit & Model Risk98
Difficulty Any beginner intermediate advanced

8 questions in Data Platform Architecture.

  1. 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
  2. File Formats & Compaction beginner Multiple choice

    A team keeps three years of event data as gzipped CSV in object storage because it is simple and anything can read it. The table is now about 500 GB compressed and the daily dashboard query reads four of the 60 columns. What has the simplicity actually cost them?

    2 min answer csvparquetgzipsplittability
  3. Medallion Architecture beginner Multiple choice

    A platform lands raw order events in bronze, types and cleans them in silver, and builds a revenue table in gold. Finance finds that orders in three currencies have been converted at the wrong rate since July - the conversion is a CASE expression in the silver transformation. Which correction is the layering there to make possible?

    2 min answer medallionreprocessingbronzeidempotency
  4. Medallion Architecture beginner

    A team proposes bronze, silver and gold layers for a pipeline that ingests one CSV daily and produces one report. Is that right?

    2 min answer pragmatismlayeringdesign
  5. Open Table Formats beginner

    Your team already writes compressed Parquet files to object storage and queries them with a SQL engine. An engineer proposes moving the same files to Iceberg. The bytes on disk barely change, so what does the table format actually add?

    2 min answer icebergparquettable-formatmetadata
  6. Storage Layout & Partitioning beginner Multiple choice

    A new engineer asks why the 8 TB events table in the lakehouse has no index on customer_id when the same column is indexed in the operational Postgres the data came from. What is the actual reason?

    2 min answer partitioningcolumnarpruningparquet
  7. Transformation Frameworks beginner

    A team runs 40 SQL scripts nightly, numbered 01 through 40 and executed in order by a shell script. Someone proposes adopting a transformation framework. A senior analyst pushes back - the scripts already run in the right order, so what does a framework actually add? What is the honest answer, and when is the analyst right?

    3 min answer dbtdependency graphenvironmentstesting
  8. Warehouse, Lake & Lakehouse beginner Multiple choice

    A 40-person company has 80 GB of analytical data growing about 4 GB a month, six analysts, a nightly load from Postgres and four SaaS sources, and no data engineer. An architect proposes an object-storage lakehouse with an open table format so the company never has to migrate again. What should they build first?

    2 min answer lakehousewarehousepragmatismsizing