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Quiz

2777 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 areas2777 Architecture Fundamentals81 Distributed Systems101 Data Architecture90 Cloud Architecture87 Networking86 API & Integration Architecture87 Reliability & Resilience99 Observability92 Performance & Capacity Engineering90 Security Architecture95 Cost Architecture & FinOps92 Business Architecture93 Architecture Communication91 Enterprise Architecture100 Legacy Modernization92 AI-Era Architecture96 Software Architecture & Engineering93 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 Architecture99 Assurance, Audit & Model Risk98
Difficulty Any beginner intermediate advanced

1029 questions.

  1. Sequence Diagrams intermediate

    Two engineers disagree about what happens when a customer cancels an order, and both have been on the team for years. Rather than settle it in the meeting, what do you do, and what will you probably find?

    2 min answer tracingsequence diagramdocumentationdrift
  2. Sequence Diagrams intermediate

    What can a sequence diagram show that a component diagram cannot, and what is the rule for drawing one worth having?

    2 min answer sequence-diagramlatencyfailure-pathscoupling
  3. Serverless intermediate

    A news organisation's publishing pipeline runs rarely during quiet periods and intensely around major events, performing image processing, rendering and distribution. Where does serverless fit, and where would it be a mistake?

    2 min answer serverlessevent-drivencold-startpublishing
  4. Serverless intermediate

    A team is choosing between serverless functions and long-running containers for a new workload. What evidence should drive the decision, and which arguments on both sides are usually wrong?

    2 min answer serverlesscontainerscost-per-requestcold-start
  5. Serverless vs Containers intermediate Multiple choice

    A publisher must choose between serverless functions and containers for its asynchronous processing. What decides it?

    2 min answer serverlesscontainersduty-cyclecold-start
  6. Serverless vs Containers intermediate

    A team must choose between serverless functions and containers for a new API with unpredictable, spiky traffic. Walk through the decision.

    2 min answer decisioncostoperations
  7. Serverless vs Containers intermediate

    A team must choose between serverless functions and long-running containers for a new workload. Which characteristics decide it?

    2 min answer renderserverlesscontainersworkload
  8. Service Boundaries intermediate Multiple choice

    For a retailer, should order management, payment and fulfilment be one service or three?

    2 min answer retailboundariescouplingdecision
  9. Service Boundaries intermediate

    Two services share a database because it was faster to build that way. Both teams now block each other on every schema change. What do you do?

    1 min answer couplingdatamicroservicesrefactoring
  10. Service Discovery intermediate Multiple choice

    A multi-tenant SaaS platform uses a service registry for discovery. The registry becomes unavailable during an incident. What should happen to running traffic, and what does that requirement imply about the design?

    1 min answer freshworksservice-discoverystatic-stabilitycaching
  11. Service Discovery intermediate Multiple choice

    Every deployment produces a 30-second burst of connection errors, even though the new instances are healthy. The registry shows correct data. What is the most likely cause?

    2 min answer service-discoverydeploymentdnsgraceful-shutdown
  12. Service Mesh Networking intermediate

    A multi-product SaaS company with about forty services in three languages is evaluating a service mesh. Is it justified, and what would you check first?

    2 min answer service-meshcomplexitymtlsobservability