CPSA CPSA Integration and Interfaces Questions and Answers 2

Question 1

What is the primary architectural advantage of using an API gateway in a microservices system?

Accepted Answer

It provides a single entry point for clients, centralizing cross-cutting concerns like authentication, rate limiting, and routing

Answer

It replaces the need for individual microservice databases

Answer

It ensures all microservices are written in the same technology stack

Answer

It eliminates the need for service discovery within the cluster

Question 2

Which pattern addresses the problem of cascading failures when one service in an integration chain becomes slow or unavailable?

Accepted Answer

Circuit Breaker pattern

Answer

Saga pattern

Answer

CQRS pattern

Answer

Event Sourcing pattern

Question 3

In REST API design, what does 'HATEOAS' enable in terms of system integration?

Accepted Answer

Clients discover available actions dynamically from hypermedia links in responses, reducing client-server coupling

Answer

Servers cache all responses to improve API performance

Answer

Clients authenticate using hardware tokens instead of passwords

Answer

APIs can operate without a network connection using local caching

Question 4

What is the 'strangler fig' pattern used for in integration architecture?

Accepted Answer

Incrementally migrating a legacy system by routing functionality to a new system piece by piece

Answer

Removing unused integration endpoints from a legacy API

Answer

Splitting a monolithic database into microservice-owned databases

Answer

Caching legacy system responses to improve performance

Question 5

When designing an interface contract, what is the importance of versioning strategy?

Accepted Answer

It allows interfaces to evolve without breaking existing consumers, enabling independent deployment of providers and consumers

Answer

It ensures all consumers always use the latest interface version immediately

Answer

It prevents any changes to the interface once consumers are connected

Answer

It eliminates the need for backward compatibility testing

Question 6

What is 'contract testing' in the context of service integration?

Accepted Answer

Automated tests that verify a provider's API matches the expectations of its consumers without deploying all services together

Answer

Legal agreements between software vendors about API uptime guarantees

Answer

End-to-end tests that run the full integrated system in a staging environment

Answer

Performance tests measuring the throughput of integration endpoints