Search the practice set
275 questions, 991 terms and 600 topics in 30 areas.
60 results for “Client State Architecture”
Server State Versus UI State
The distinction between data owned elsewhere and cached locally, and state that exists only in this session — conflating them causes most client state bugs.
Client Runtime Constraint
The properties of the browser or device you do not control — CPU, network, version, extensions — which make the client a distributed system component rather than a rendering surface.
Backend for Frontend
A separate, narrow backend per client experience, which aggregates and reshapes downstream services for exactly that client's needs.
CI/CD
Merging work continuously into a shared trunk with automated verification, and keeping every commit in a state that could be released.
CQRS
Separating the model used to change state from the model used to read it, so each can be optimised independently.
Encapsulation
Keeping a component's state private, so it can only be changed through operations that maintain its invariants.
Event Sourcing
Storing the full sequence of state-changing events as the system of record, and deriving current state by replaying them.
Kubernetes
A container orchestrator that continuously reconciles the running state of a cluster towards a declared desired state.
Modular Monolith
A single deployable unit internally partitioned into modules with enforced boundaries, explicit interfaces and no shared internal state.
Architecture Cost Model
A calculation, made during design, of what an architecture will cost to run at expected and at peak volume.
Architecture Decision Log
The ordered, immutable collection of a system's decision records, read as a history rather than as a specification.
Architecture Decision Record
A short, immutable document capturing one architectural decision, its context, the alternatives, and its consequences.
Architecture Development Method
TOGAF's iterative cycle for developing enterprise architecture, which is valuable as a checklist of concerns and harmful when followed literally.
Architecture Principle
A durable, agreed rule that constrains design decisions in advance, stated with its rationale and its implications.
Architecture Review Board
A forum that reviews significant designs against standards, risks and strategy before commitment.
A front-end team wants to replace their global state library because "state management is unmanageable". How do you evaluate the request?
Ask what is actually in the store The complaint almost always resolves to one distinction not having been made: server state versus UI state . Server state is d
A client wants an assistant that answers questions from 50,000 internal documents which change weekly. RAG or fine-tuning? What actually determines the quality?
What the interviewer is testing Whether you understand what each technique actually does, and whether you know that RAG quality is a retrieval problem. Why RAG
A CFO asks why the architecture function should be funded when it ships no features. You have five minutes. What do you say?
Do not answer with activities "We produce standards, run a review board and maintain the technology radar" describes what the function does, not what the busine
A marketing site is a client-rendered single-page application. Organic traffic is poor and the team blames the search engine. What is your assessment?
The rendering choice is the problem A marketing page is identical for every visitor and highly cacheable. Rendering it in the browser pays for personalisation t
A regulated client requires that no traffic between their data centre and your SaaS platform traverses the public internet. Design the connectivity and justify the cost.
Two distinct requirements hiding in one sentence Traffic must not traverse the public internet — a routing requirement. The client must be able to demonstrate i
A regulator asks how you ensure marketing consent withdrawal is honoured everywhere. What does the architecture need to show?
The answer they want is mechanism plus evidence Not "we have a consent database". They want to see how a withdrawal reaches every system that could act on it, a
A service becomes unresponsive during an incident in a dependency it barely uses. Investigation finds the client had no read timeout. Explain the full mechanism.
The mechanism, step by step 1. The dependency slows. It has not failed — it accepts connections and eventually responds, just very slowly. This is the important
Client State Architecture
Server state, UI state and derived state, and why conflating them causes most bugs.
Client Caching & Data Layer
Stale-while-revalidate, invalidation and optimistic updates on the client.
Client Feature Flags
Flag evaluation on a device you do not control, and the flicker and staleness it brings.
API Shapes for UI
REST, GraphQL and RPC judged by over-fetching, round trips and client coupling.
Abstraction & Encapsulation
Hiding mechanism behind contract, and protecting invariants by owning state.
Backend for Frontend
A narrow backend per client experience, owned by that client's team.
Event Sourcing
The event log as the system of record, with state as a projection.
GraphQL
Client-specified queries, N+1 resolution and query-cost control.
Idempotency Keys
Client-generated keys stored atomically with the operation they guard.
Infrastructure as Code
Declarative infrastructure, drift, state files and rebuild-from-empty.
Rendering Strategies
Client, server, static and incremental rendering, and what each costs on first paint.
Trade-off Fundamentals
Why every architecture is a set of purchases, and how to state what you gave up.
AI-Era Architecture
General material on architecting systems that include models.
Accessibility Architecture
Semantics, focus management and announcements designed in rather than audited in.
Application Architecture
The application estate as a designed portfolio rather than an accumulation.
Architecture Communication
General material on communicating architecture.
Architecture Compliance Checks
Automating conformance to standards so review effort goes to the genuinely novel.
Architecture Cost Modelling
Pricing a design before building it, at expected and at ten times volume.
Architecture Decision Records
One decision, its context, alternatives and consequences, kept immutable.
Architecture Decision-Making
General material on making and recording architectural decisions.
Architecture Diagrams
Choosing an audience and refusing to mix levels of abstraction.
Architecture Documentation
What to write down, at what altitude, and what nobody will ever read.
Architecture Fundamentals
General material on what solution architecture is and what an architect is accountable for.
Architecture Governance
Preventive, automated controls rather than review meetings.
Architecture Patterns
General material on architectural patterns and their trade-offs.
Architecture Principles
Durable agreed rules that rule options out, stated with rationale and implications.
Architecture Review Boards
Thresholds, early engagement and a real route to accept deviation.
Architecture Reviews
Reviewing early enough to influence rather than to veto.
Frontend & Experience Architecture
The client as a distributed system component with its own state, cache and failure modes.
Data Architecture
Where state lives, how it is modelled, replicated, partitioned and governed.
AI-Era Architecture
AI workloads meeting security, data, networking, reliability and cost.
API & Integration Architecture
Contracts between systems, and the compatibility discipline that keeps them working.
Architecture Communication
Explain the same architecture to a CEO, an engineering manager and an engineer.
Architecture Decision-Making
Where senior engineer becomes architect: evaluate, choose, write it down.
Architecture Fundamentals
What architecture actually is: drivers, constraints, trade-offs and the principles behind them.
Architecture Patterns
Patterns as tools for recurring problems, with forces and consequences.