Interactive Mock Test: Architecture Foundations & Core Patterns

What This Mock Exam Covers

This 20-question mock test covers the first two phases of the Software Architecture Hub: Foundations & Evolution and Core Architecture Patterns. You will be tested on Client-Server, MVC, Layered Architecture, SOA, Domain-Driven Design, Monolith vs. Microservices tradeoffs, Modular Monoliths, Clean Architecture, and Pipe & Filter patterns.

Many of these questions are scenario-based to mimic real-world system design interviews. Aim to complete this within 30 minutes.

Section 1: Foundations & Evolution

1. A legacy desktop application directly connects to a centralized database over a local network, with no application server in between. What pattern is this?

2. In the MVC architecture pattern, which component is strictly responsible for handling user input and deciding what action to take?

3. You are designing a standard 3-Tier Layered application. What is the fundamental restriction concerning how layers communicate?

4. Which of the following best describes the primary role of an Enterprise Service Bus (ESB) in Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA)?

5. A developer tells you they are using the 'Singleton pattern' to structure their new scalable microservices platform. What concept are they mostly likely confusing?

6. In a Peer-to-Peer (P2P) network like BitTorrent, how does the network handle an sudden surge of tens of thousands of users requesting the same file?

7. You are building an e-commerce system using Domain-Driven Design. The Sales team requires a 'Product' model with price and SEO attributes. The Warehouse team requires a 'Product' model with dimensions and shelf location. What is the DDD approach to this?

8. In Domain-Driven Design, what distinguishes an 'Entity' from a 'Value Object'?

Section 2: Core Architecture Patterns

9. A startup of 4 engineers is building a new application from scratch. They decide to use a Microservices Architecture with 12 distinct services to ensure future scalability. What is the most likely outcome according to modern architectural consensus?

10. According to Conway's Law, what happens if an organization structure with three heavily siloed backend teams attempts to build a unified Monolithic application?

11. What is the defining characteristic of a 'Modular Monolith'?

12. You need to upgrade your framework, but your core business logic is heavily coupled to the legacy framework's ORM and HTTP request objects. Which architecture pattern explicitly prevents this problem?

13. In Hexagonal Architecture (Ports and Adapters), what is the difference between a 'Driving' port and a 'Driven' port?

14. Visual Studio Code allows third-party developers to add massive functionality without modifying the editor's core binary. Which architectural pattern enables this?

15. An ETL (Extract, Transform, Load) pipeline receives a raw CSV file, normalizes the dates, filters out bad records, and writes to a database. Which pattern perfectly describes this data flow?

Section 3: Failure Modes & Tradeoffs

16. The developers at your company complain that they must open 5 different observability dashboards (Jaeger, Datadog, AWS, etc.) just to figure out why a single user sign-up failed. This is a classic warning sign of what?

17. Two microservices (Orders and Shipping) both connect directly to the same exact Postgres `orders_db` and read/write the same tables. What is this anti-pattern called?

18. In a classic 3-Tier Web Application, a request comes in to view a user profile. The Controller calls a Service, which calls a Repository, which runs a SQL query. The data flows backward through all layers entirely unmodified. What is this anti-pattern called?

19. A team wants to start using Clean Architecture, but the Tech Lead warns them it is not suitable for their project. Under what condition is the Tech Lead correct?

20. What was Amazon Prime Video’s primary reason in 2023 for migrating their monitoring service back from Microservices/Serverless to a Monolithic architecture?

Summary

How did you do? A score of 15 or higher means you have a solid grasp of foundational architecture patterns.

Ready for the next step? Test your system design knowledge for massively scaled, fault-tolerant networks in our next mock exam: Interactive Mock Test 2: Distributed Systems & Resilience.