Search the practice set
275 questions, 991 terms and 600 topics in 30 areas.
48 results for “Semantic Layer”
Metric Definition Layer
Business metrics defined once in a versioned, tested place and served to every consuming tool, so the number cannot differ by which tool asked.
Anti-Corruption Layer
A translation layer that converts a legacy or external system's model into your own, so its concepts do not leak into your domain.
Bronze Layer Contract
What the raw landing zone promises and refuses to promise — a faithful replayable copy of the source, with no correction applied.
Layer 4 vs Layer 7 Load Balancing
Balancing on connection metadata (IP and port) versus on the content of the request (path, host, headers).
Output Validation Layer
A deterministic check applied to model output before it is used, treating the model as an untrusted component.
Semantic Cache
Caching model responses keyed by the meaning of the request rather than by its exact text, so near-duplicate questions are served without a model call.
Semantic Diffing of API Schemas
Comparing the published contract between builds and failing the build on a breaking change, so compatibility is mechanical rather than remembered.
Semantic Versioning
A version scheme where the number itself states the compatibility promise — major for breaking, minor for additive, patch for fixes.
Airbnb's Service-Oriented Migration
Airbnb decomposed a large Rails monolith by first extracting a unified data-access layer, so that services were built on owned data rather than on shared database tables.
Approximate Nearest Neighbour Index
An index that trades exactness for speed when finding similar vectors, making large-scale semantic search feasible.
Architecture Sinkhole
A request that passes through every layer of a layered architecture without any layer adding logic, indicating that the layering is pure overhead for that path.
Connection Proxy
A pooling layer between applications and a managed database that multiplexes many client connections onto a small number of database connections.
Figma's Postgres Sharding
Figma delayed sharding for years using replicas and vertical partitioning, then sharded Postgres horizontally without downtime using logical shards and a proxy layer.
Global Traffic Management
The layer that decides which region a given user reaches, using DNS, anycast or an edge network, and that performs regional failover.
Health Check Configuration
The interval, timeout, and healthy/unhealthy thresholds that together determine how quickly a failed backend leaves rotation.
Lakehouse Table Format
A metadata layer over object storage that adds atomic commits, snapshots and schema evolution to files that otherwise have none.
Latency Budget Decomposition
Allocating a total response-time target across the components of a request path, so each layer has an explicit share and overruns are attributable.
Layered Architecture
Organising code into horizontal layers — presentation, application, domain, data — where each layer may only call the one beneath it.
Load Balancing Algorithm
The rule deciding which backend receives a request — round robin, least connections, least response time, or hash-based.
Model Translation Boundary
The layer at which an external system's model is converted into your own, preventing its concepts and accidents from spreading into your domain.
Open Table Format
A metadata layer over files in object storage that supplies ACID transactions, schema evolution and time travel — the thing that turns a data lake into a lakehouse.
OpenID Connect
An identity layer over OAuth 2.0 that adds a signed ID token asserting who the user is and how they authenticated.
Origin Shield
An intermediate caching layer between CDN edge nodes and the origin, so a cache miss at many edges results in one origin request rather than many.
Service Mesh
An infrastructure layer of sidecar proxies that handles service-to-service networking — mTLS, retries, timeouts, routing, telemetry — outside the application.
Serving Latency Budget
The end-to-end time from an event occurring to its effect being queryable, allocated across ingest, processing and serving.
Stale While Revalidate
Serving cached data immediately while fetching a fresh copy in the background, which makes an interface feel instant at the cost of a brief inconsistency.
Strangler Facade
The routing layer in front of a legacy system that decides, per capability, whether a request goes to the old implementation or the new one.
TLS
The protocol that gives a network connection encryption, integrity and server authentication, underneath HTTPS and most other secure transports.
Test Strategy Altitude
Deciding which risks are verified at which level, so that each layer tests something the layers below it structurally cannot.
Traffic Splitting
Directing a defined percentage or subset of requests to a different version of a service, configured at the routing layer rather than in application code.
Web Application Firewall
A filter in front of an application that inspects HTTP requests and blocks those matching known attack patterns — useful as a layer, dangerous as a substitute.
WebSocket Backplane
A shared publish/subscribe layer letting a message published on one server reach clients connected to a different server.
Finance and Sales report different revenue for the same quarter. Both are convinced they are right. You are asked to fix the data. Where do you start?
Assume neither number is wrong The instinct is to look for a bug. In practice the overwhelming majority of these cases are two defensible definitions with no me
A core mainframe system with no API supports nightly batch file exchange only. The business needs near-real-time order status. Design the integration.
Establish the real constraint "No API" usually means no API the mainframe team will build on your timeline . Find out what exists: message queue interfaces, dat
A service has widely varying request costs — most complete in 10 ms, some take 5 s. Under round robin some instances are overwhelmed while others idle. What do you change?
Why round robin fails here It distributes by count , not by cost or by whether a backend is coping. With uniform requests that is fine. With a 500× cost spread,
Semantic Layer
Metric definitions held once and served to every tool that asks.
Anti-Corruption Layer
Translating a foreign model at the boundary so it does not leak in.
Client Caching & Data Layer
Stale-while-revalidate, invalidation and optimistic updates on the client.
Layer 4 vs Layer 7
Connection-level versus request-level balancing, and what each unlocks.
Real-Time Serving Layer
Where a low-latency read of a streaming aggregate actually lands.
Caching for Performance
Layer choice, hit ratio as a first-class metric, and cold-cache recovery.
Container Image Strategy
Base images, layer hygiene, rebuild cadence, and patching a fleet of images.
Encryption
At rest, in transit, and at the application layer — three different threats.
Medallion Architecture
Bronze, silver and gold layers, and what each layer is allowed to guarantee.
OAuth 2.0 & OIDC
Delegated authorisation, and the identity layer that makes login safe.
Sagas & Compensation
Replacing atomicity with semantic undo, and ordering the irreversible steps last.