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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
Difficulty Any beginner intermediate advanced

26 questions in API & Integration.

  1. API Error Handling intermediate

    A platform's plugin API returns generic 500 errors when anything goes wrong. Developers cannot tell whether to retry, fix their code, or contact support. Redesign the error model.

    2 min answer error-handlingapi-designretryabilitydeveloper-experience
  2. API Error Handling intermediate

    A public API's errors are a mixture of HTTP status codes, free-text messages and inconsistent bodies. Design an error contract that integrators can automate against, and explain what each part is for.

    2 min answer api-designerrorsretryabilityintegrators
  3. GraphQL intermediate

    A team debates REST and GraphQL for a new public API. What should actually decide it, and what is the operational cost each one imposes?

    2 min answer postmangraphqlrestapi-design
  4. gRPC APIs intermediate Multiple choice

    A real-time platform uses gRPC internally and REST externally. Where exactly should the boundary sit, and what belongs at the translation layer?

    2 min answer grpcapi-boundarytranslationgateway
  5. Legacy Integration intermediate Multiple choice

    A modern service must read from a legacy system that offers only nightly batch files and a synchronous interface that cannot handle concurrent load. What integration approach fits?

    2 min answer legacy-integrationanti-corruption-layercdccaching
  6. Message Formats intermediate Multiple choice

    A telemetry platform ingests billions of events daily from customer agents. Which message format should the wire protocol use, and what does the choice affect beyond size?

    2 min answer serialisationprotobufschema-evolutioncompression
  7. Message Formats intermediate Multiple choice

    An events pipeline carries 2 billion events a day. Each event is JSON with 25 fields whose names average 14 characters. Roughly how many bytes a day go on field names alone, before compression?

    2 min answer message formatsjsonprotobufcompression
  8. Pagination & Filtering intermediate

    A list endpoint returning 2 million records times out on deep pages and returns 500 for validation failures. Fix both properly.

    2 min answer paginationcursorserrorshttp-semantics
  9. Pagination & Filtering intermediate Multiple choice

    An insurance API returns policy and claim lists that can be very large. Which pagination approach should be used, and what breaks with the obvious one?

    2 min answer ackopaginationcursorsconsistency
  10. Pagination & Filtering intermediate

    Your API issues opaque cursors for keyset pagination. Three weeks after a client stored one, you change the default sort from created_at to relevance_score. The client resumes with the old cursor. What happens, and what should happen?

    2 min answer paginationcursorsversioningsilent failure
  11. REST Design intermediate

    A developer platform's REST API returns collections that can contain millions of items. Which design decisions separate an API that scales from one that does not?

    2 min answer restpaginationapi-designgithub
  12. REST Design intermediate

    Which REST API design decisions are expensive to change once consumers exist?

    1 min answer restpaginationidentifierserrors