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Quiz

2741 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 areas2741 Architecture Fundamentals81 Distributed Systems101 Data Architecture90 Cloud Architecture87 Networking86 API & Integration Architecture78 Reliability & Resilience99 Observability92 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 Architecture102 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

1018 questions.

  1. OpenTelemetry intermediate

    An organisation with several existing telemetry systems considers adopting OpenTelemetry. What does it actually solve, and what does adopting it not fix?

    2 min answer segmentopentelemetrystandardsvendor-lock-in
  2. Organisational Constraints intermediate

    Every change to a cross-team interface must be approved by an architecture forum that meets weekly with six 20-minute slots. About 14 requests arrive each week. Over the next two quarters, what happens to the queue and — more importantly — what happens to the designs themselves?

    3 min answer decision latencygovernancequeueingover-design
  3. Outbox intermediate

    A service must update its database and publish an event. Why is doing both directly incorrect, and what does the outbox pattern guarantee?

    2 min answer outboxdual-writeatomicityat-least-once
  4. Outcome Measurement intermediate

    A nine-month consolidation retired four systems and released about 0.4 FTE of support effort in each of four teams. The programme closed as a success, verified by the delivery plan. Eleven months after the business case was signed, finance reports run cost unchanged and the £1.2m annual saving nowhere in the ledger. What failed, and which decision made it possible?

    3 min answer benefitsoutcome measurementfinancedecommissioning
  5. Outcome Measurement intermediate

    A platform ships a major architectural change and declares it successful because it was delivered on time. What should have been measured?

    2 min answer outcome-measurementhypothesisevidencearchitecture
  6. Outcome Measurement intermediate

    An engineering organisation reports velocity, deployment frequency and story points. Leadership cannot tell whether the investment is working. What is missing?

    2 min answer chargebeeoutcomesmetricsdelivery
  7. OWASP Risks intermediate

    A marketplace hosts seller-generated content including descriptions, images and shop pages. Which common web risks are amplified, and what controls apply?

    2 min answer owaspxssuser-contentcsp
  8. OWASP Risks intermediate Multiple choice

    A penetration test reports that every object identifier in your API is a sequential integer and flags insecure direct object reference. Ownership is checked in shared middleware on every route. Three endpoints still returned another user's data: a bulk update that takes an array of identifiers, a nested comment fetch, and a CSV export. Where do you look first?

    3 min answer broken-access-controlidorobject-level-authorizationmiddleware
  9. 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
  10. 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
  11. 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
  12. Parallel Run intermediate

    An enterprise runs old and new systems in parallel to validate the replacement. What makes a parallel run effective, and what makes it expensive theatre?

    2 min answer parallel-runverificationcomparisoncutover