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Quiz

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

39 questions in Data Platform Architecture.

  1. File Formats & Compaction intermediate

    A table written by a streaming job has become unusably slow. It holds 400 GB across 8 million files. Diagnose and fix.

    2 min answer performancecompactionstreaming
  2. Ingestion Patterns intermediate

    A platform team proposes one ingestion standard: every source publishes to Kafka and the warehouse loads only from Kafka. That includes 40 SaaS connectors that pull once a day. The argument is one path, one set of tools, and replayability everywhere. Review it — what would you remove, what would you keep and what would you leave alone?

    3 min answer ingestionkafkauniformityoperability
  3. Ingestion Patterns intermediate

    An analytics team extracts daily using a `modified_at` watermark. Reconciliation shows the warehouse has 3% more customers than the source. Why?

    2 min answer cdcingestiondata-quality
  4. Medallion Architecture intermediate

    A data platform organises tables into bronze, silver and gold layers. What determines what belongs in each, and what is the common failure?

    2 min answer databricksmedallionlayerscontracts
  5. Medallion Architecture intermediate

    A team adopts bronze/silver/gold layering and every layer becomes a copy of the previous one with minor changes. What should each layer actually guarantee?

    2 min answer medallionlayeringdata-qualitycontracts
  6. Medallion Architecture intermediate

    What does a layered bronze-silver-gold structure actually buy, and where does it become ceremony?

    2 min answer medallionlayersreprocessingquality
  7. Open Table Formats intermediate Multiple choice

    A team has 90 TB of Parquet in Hive-style date directories and wants Iceberg tables with no downtime for the 200 dashboards reading them. Which sequence is right?

    3 min answer icebergmigrationhivemetadata
  8. Reverse ETL intermediate

    A company wants warehouse data pushed back into operational systems. What are the design considerations, and what should not go through this path?

    2 min answer udaanreverse-etloperationalfreshness
  9. Reverse ETL intermediate

    A platform pushes warehouse-derived data back into operational systems. What are the risks, and what must be designed?

    2 min answer reverse-etloperational-datafreshnessidempotency
  10. Reverse ETL intermediate

    Marketing wants warehouse segments pushed into the campaign tool hourly. What do you require before agreeing?

    2 min answer integrationgovernanceoperations
  11. Slowly Changing Dimensions intermediate

    A "customers by segment" dashboard tile reports 104,300 where the customer table holds 100,000 rows. Revenue on the same dashboard is also about 4% high. The join looks correct, the pipeline is green, and re-running changes nothing. What is happening?

    3 min answer scd2joinsfan-outdbt tests
  12. Slowly Changing Dimensions intermediate

    A customer's attribute changes. Which slowly-changing-dimension approach should be used, and what decides it?

    2 min answer scdhistorypoint-in-timereporting