CDS Data Management & Integration 2 — Questions and Answers
Question 1: Which data integration pattern uses a central hub to transform and route messages between systems, allowing each system to communicate only with the hub?
- Point-to-Point
- Hub-and-Spoke (Correct answer)
- Publish-Subscribe
- Batch ETL
Correct answer: Hub-and-Spoke
The Hub-and-Spoke pattern centralizes integration logic so each system connects only to the hub, reducing the number of direct integrations required.
Question 2: A data steward discovers that two source systems use different date formats (MM/DD/YYYY vs YYYY-MM-DD) for the same field. This is an example of which data quality issue?
- Data redundancy
- Data latency
- Semantic inconsistency
- Syntactic inconsistency (Correct answer)
Correct answer: Syntactic inconsistency
Syntactic inconsistency occurs when the same data is represented in different formats or structures across systems.
Question 3: What is the primary purpose of a data dictionary in data management?
- To store raw data from source systems
- To define and document the meaning, format, and usage of data elements (Correct answer)
- To enforce referential integrity in databases
- To schedule ETL job execution
Correct answer: To define and document the meaning, format, and usage of data elements
A data dictionary provides authoritative definitions for data elements including names, descriptions, data types, and business rules.
Question 4: In Master Data Management (MDM), what is a 'golden record'?
- An encrypted backup of critical data
- A record that has never been modified since creation
- The single, authoritative, trusted version of a master data entity (Correct answer)
- A record stored in a gold-tier storage tier
Correct answer: The single, authoritative, trusted version of a master data entity
A golden record is the consolidated, de-duplicated, and authoritative representation of a business entity created from multiple source systems.
Question 5: Which integration approach is BEST suited for near-real-time data synchronization between an operational system and an analytics platform?
- Nightly batch ETL
- Change Data Capture (CDC) (Correct answer)
- Full table replacement
- Manual data entry
Correct answer: Change Data Capture (CDC)
CDC captures and propagates only the changed data rows as they occur, enabling near-real-time synchronization with minimal load.
Question 6: An organization wants to integrate data from 15 different source systems into a data warehouse. Without any integration middleware, how many point-to-point connections would potentially be needed for full interconnectivity?
- 15
- 30
- 105 (Correct answer)
- 225
Correct answer: 105
Point-to-point connections in a fully connected mesh = n*(n-1)/2, so 15*14/2 = 105 connections, illustrating the scalability problem.
Question 7: What does 'data provenance' refer to in data management?
- The geographic location where data is stored
- The documented history of data's origin, movement, and transformations (Correct answer)
- The process of archiving outdated data records
- The encryption standard applied to sensitive data
Correct answer: The documented history of data's origin, movement, and transformations
Data provenance tracks where data came from, how it was transformed, and where it has been—critical for auditability and trust.
CDS Data Management & Integration 2
Which data integration pattern uses a central hub to transform and route messages between systems, allowing each system to communicate only with the hub?