CDO Information Architecture & Strategy 5 — Questions and Answers
Question 1: In Kimball dimensional modeling, what does the 'grain' of a fact table define?
- The number of dimensions joined to it
- The storage compression ratio
- Exactly what a single fact row represents (Correct answer)
- The refresh frequency of the table
Correct answer: Exactly what a single fact row represents
Declaring the grain, such as one row per order line, is the critical first step in designing a fact table.
Question 2: A dimension that keeps full history by adding a new row with effective dates whenever an attribute changes is which slowly changing dimension type?
- Type 0
- Type 1
- Type 3
- Type 2 (Correct answer)
Correct answer: Type 2
SCD Type 2 adds versioned rows, whereas Type 1 overwrites values and Type 3 keeps limited prior values in extra columns.
Question 3: What is the main purpose of an architecture review board (ARB) in a data strategy?
- To approve individual employee data access requests
- To ensure solutions align with target architecture, standards, and principles, and to manage exceptions (Correct answer)
- To write all ETL code centrally
- To replace the data governance council entirely
Correct answer: To ensure solutions align with target architecture, standards, and principles, and to manage exceptions
An ARB governs design decisions against agreed principles and standards, which reduces fragmentation and technical debt.
Question 4: Which statement best captures the difference between a data strategy and a data architecture?
- Strategy defines the why and what (goals, priorities, operating model), while architecture defines how data is structured, integrated, and delivered (Correct answer)
- They are the same document
- Architecture sets business goals, while strategy picks technologies
- Strategy is technical and architecture is purely organizational
Correct answer: Strategy defines the why and what (goals, priorities, operating model), while architecture defines how data is structured, integrated, and delivered
The data strategy sets direction and value, and the architecture is the blueprint that carries it out.
Question 5: An organization wants to query data across several source systems in real time without copying it into a central store. Which approach fits best?
- Batch ETL into a warehouse
- Data virtualization (Correct answer)
- Data archiving
- Change data capture into a data lake
Correct answer: Data virtualization
Data virtualization gives a unified logical view by querying sources in place, without physically moving the data.
Question 6: Which characteristic is NOT typically required for a dataset to be treated as a 'data product' in a data mesh?
- Discoverable
- Addressable
- Trustworthy with defined quality SLOs
- Stored in one centralized enterprise warehouse (Correct answer)
Correct answer: Stored in one centralized enterprise warehouse
Data products should be discoverable, addressable, trustworthy, self-describing, interoperable, and secure, and they do not have to be centralized.
Question 7: When building a data architecture roadmap, why should a CDO do a capability-based gap analysis between the current and target states?
- To choose the cheapest vendor
- To avoid any stakeholder engagement
- To find and prioritize the initiatives needed to close gaps, then sequence them by value and dependency (Correct answer)
- To freeze the architecture permanently
Correct answer: To find and prioritize the initiatives needed to close gaps, then sequence them by value and dependency
Gap analysis turns the target state into a sequenced, prioritized portfolio of work.
