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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

993 questions.

  1. Device Identity intermediate

    Review this design. A delivery-partner app on low-end Android phones reads a device identifier from the operating system at launch and uses it as the primary key of a devices table. The row holds the partner's current shift, an offline cash ledger and a per-device fraud limit. The identifier is Android SSAID or iOS identifierForVendor depending on platform. What would you remove, what would you change, and what would you leave alone?

    3 min answer device-identityandroidiosfraud
  2. Device Provisioning intermediate

    A consumer device sells 600,000 units in the fourth quarter and most of them are gifts. Roughly how many first-boot provisioning requests per second should the platform be sized for on the morning of 25 December, and what does the number rule out?

    3 min answer provisioningcapacitycertificatesactivation
  3. Device Provisioning intermediate

    Devices are provisioned on a contract manufacturer's line: each unit boots, calls your cloud provisioning service, receives a unique certificate, and is boxed. At 02:00 on a Saturday your provisioning service becomes unreachable from that factory. The line runs three shifts and cannot stop. What happens next, and what should the design have been?

    3 min answer provisioningmanufacturingavailabilitycertificates
  4. Digital Twin intermediate Multiple choice

    A building-controls platform stores a desired state per device and reconciles it on every connection. An operator sets a fan setpoint that one hardware revision cannot accept, and applies it in bulk to 40,000 units. The platform compares reported state with desired state to decide whether to act. What happens over the next day, and which single change stops it?

    2 min answer digital-twinreconciliationdesired-statewrite-amplification
  5. Digital Twin intermediate Multiple choice

    A field device is offline for hours at a time, and operators change its settings while it is away - sometimes twice. What should the platform store?

    2 min answer digital-twinshadowidempotencyreconciliation
  6. Digital Twin intermediate

    What problem does a digital twin actually solve, and when is it over-engineering?

    1 min answer digital-twinsimulationstatemodelling
  7. Dimensional Modelling intermediate Multiple choice

    A BI team replaces a 9-table star schema with a single denormalised table of 240 columns because dashboards were slow and analysts kept joining at the wrong grain. Six months later the table is 4 TB across roughly 3 billion rows, the nightly build takes 5 hours, and correcting one product's category requires a full rebuild. Which property did the flattening actually trade away?

    3 min answer one big tabledenormalisationscdrebuild cost
  8. Dimensional Modelling intermediate

    When is dimensional modelling still the right approach, and what does it cost?

    2 min answer dimensional-modellingstar-schemausabilityperformance
  9. DR Testing intermediate

    A core internal service has run continuously for three years. What risk does that create?

    2 min answer awscold-startrecoverytesting
  10. DR Testing intermediate

    An enterprise runs an annual disaster recovery test that always succeeds, yet the team has low confidence in real recovery. What is likely wrong with the test?

    2 min answer dr-testingdrillsrealismenterprise
  11. Distributed Systems intermediate

    An order service must notify inventory, billing, shipping and analytics when an order is placed. Synchronous calls or events? Justify your choice per consumer.

    2 min answer event-drivencouplingavailabilityintegration
  12. Distributed Systems intermediate

    Design an order submission API that is safe when the client cannot tell whether its request succeeded. What exactly do you store, and when?

    2 min answer idempotencyapi-designretries