Architecture & System Design Flashcards
7 cards from real CDT practice questions. Tap to flip, then mark Knew It or Still Learning — missed cards come back until you master them.
Read the first 7 Architecture & System Design flashcards as text
A legal firm requires that documents sent externally cannot be forwarded or printed by recipients. Which technology enforces this at the document level?
Answer: Information Rights Management (IRM)
IRM embeds usage restrictions directly in the document file, enforcing permissions regardless of where the file travels.
What is the key advantage of using a microservices architecture for a document processing platform compared to a monolithic design?
Answer: Independent scaling and deployment of each processing function
Microservices allow each function (OCR, classification, rendering) to scale and be deployed independently based on its own demand.
In a multi-tenant document management SaaS platform, which isolation strategy provides the strongest data separation between customers?
Answer: Separate database instance per tenant
Separate database instances provide the strongest isolation because a misconfiguration or breach in one tenant's data cannot affect another.
Which caching strategy is most appropriate for a document thumbnail service that generates previews on first request?
Answer: Cache-aside (lazy loading) pattern
Cache-aside loads the thumbnail into cache only on the first request, avoiding pre-generating previews for documents that are never viewed.
A document workflow system must resume processing exactly where it left off after a server crash. Which design pattern best supports this?
Answer: Saga pattern with persistent checkpointing
The Saga pattern with persistent checkpointing records each completed step so the workflow can resume from the last checkpoint after a failure.
In an enterprise document system, what is the purpose of a rendition service?
Answer: Convert source documents into alternative formats or resolutions on demand
A rendition service transforms the original document into alternate formats (PDF, thumbnail, mobile-optimized) without modifying the source file.
Which approach best handles the ingestion of documents with varying schemas and unknown structure in a modern document platform?
Answer: Schema-on-read with flexible document store
Schema-on-read stores documents as-is and applies structure interpretation at query time, accommodating diverse and evolving document types.