Software architecture exam questions and answers

Software architecture exam questions and answers

Here are 20 software architecture exam questions along with their answers:

Question: What is software architecture?

Answer: Software architecture refers to the high-level structure and organization of a software system, including its components, relationships, and principles.

Question: What are the key responsibilities of a software architect?

Answer: Software architects are responsible for designing the overall structure of a software system, making key technical decisions, ensuring architectural integrity, and guiding the development team.

Question: What are the commonly used architectural styles in software development?

Answer: Some commonly used architectural styles are layered architecture, client-server architecture, microservices architecture, event-driven architecture, and service-oriented architecture (SOA).

Question: What is the difference between a monolithic and microservices architecture?

Answer: In a monolithic architecture, the entire application is developed as a single, tightly-coupled unit. In contrast, a microservices architecture decomposes the application into a collection of loosely-coupled services.

Question: What is the role of design patterns in software architecture?

Answer: Design patterns provide reusable solutions to common design problems in software development. They help architects make informed design decisions and improve the overall quality of the software system.

Question: Explain the concept of scalability in software architecture.

Answer: Scalability refers to the ability of a software system to handle increasing workload and user demand by adding additional resources or components without affecting performance or reliability.

Question: What is the difference between horizontal and vertical scaling?

Answer: Horizontal scaling involves adding more machines or nodes to distribute the workload, while vertical scaling involves adding more resources (such as CPU or memory) to a single machine.

Question: What is an architectural pattern?

Answer: An architectural pattern is a general, reusable solution to a recurring architectural problem. It provides a set of guidelines and best practices for designing a specific type of software system.

Question: What are the advantages of using a layered architecture?

Answer: Layered architecture promotes separation of concerns, modularity, and reusability. It allows for easier maintenance, testing, and flexibility in replacing or modifying individual layers.

Question: What is the role of an interface in software architecture?

Answer: Interfaces define a contract between different components or modules in a software system. They provide a clear definition of the methods, properties, and behavior that the component must implement.

Question: Explain the concept of coupling and cohesion in software architecture.

Answer: Coupling refers to the degree of interdependence between components in a system, while cohesion refers to how closely the responsibilities and functionalities within a component are related. Low coupling and high cohesion are desirable architectural qualities.

Question: What is the purpose of a software design document?

Answer: A software design document captures the architectural decisions, design considerations, and technical details of a software system. It serves as a reference for developers, testers, and stakeholders.

Question: How does the Model-View-Controller (MVC) pattern work?

Answer: The MVC pattern separates an application into three main components: the model (data and business logic), the view (user interface), and the controller (handles user input and updates the model/view).

Question: What is the role of an architect in an Agile development process?

Answer: In Agile development, the architect collaborates with the development team, helps prioritize technical tasks, ensures architectural integrity, and provides guidance on design decisions throughout the iterative development process.

Question: What is the difference between a black-box and a white-box architectural design approach?

Answer: In a black-box approach, the focus is on the external behavior and functionality of the system, without concern for the internal details.

Question: What is the role of architectural patterns in software development?

Answer: Architectural patterns provide proven solutions to recurring architectural problems. They offer a high-level blueprint for designing software systems and guide architects in making informed design decisions.

Question: What are the key considerations for designing a distributed system architecture?

Answer: When designing a distributed system architecture, considerations include communication protocols, data consistency, fault tolerance, load balancing, and security across multiple nodes or components.

Question: What is the role of a software architect in ensuring system security?

Answer: A software architect is responsible for identifying security risks, defining security requirements, and incorporating security controls into the system design. They must consider authentication, authorization, data encryption, and secure communication protocols.

Question: What are the trade-offs between a centralized and decentralized architectural approach?

Answer: A centralized architecture provides better control and coordination but may be a single point of failure. A decentralized architecture offers scalability and fault tolerance but can be more complex to manage and synchronize.

Question: How does the event-driven architecture (EDA) differ from the request-response model?

Answer: In a request-response model, the client initiates a request, and the server responds with the result. In an event-driven architecture, components communicate through events, and they react to events asynchronously, decoupling the sender and receiver.