CPSA Architectural Goals and Constraints 2

Question 1

Which technique best helps architects identify conflicting quality goals early in a project?

Accepted Answer

Quality attribute scenario workshops

Answer

Quality attribute scenario workshops surface conflicts between competing goals like performance vs. security before design decisions are locked in.

Question 2

A system must handle both real-time trading and batch reporting. These requirements create what type of architectural tension?

Accepted Answer

A tradeoff between latency and throughput

Answer

Real-time trading demands low latency while batch reporting benefits from high throughput, creating a classic latency-vs-throughput tradeoff.

Question 3

What does a binding time constraint specify in software architecture?

Accepted Answer

When a design decision can be changed or must be fixed

Answer

Binding time constraints define whether a design decision is fixed at compile time, deployment time, or can be changed at runtime.

Question 4

A regulatory constraint requires all data to remain within a specific country's borders. How does this most directly affect architectural decisions?

Accepted Answer

It restricts deployment topology and cloud region selection

Answer

Data residency regulations directly constrain where infrastructure can be hosted, limiting cloud regions and deployment topology choices.

Question 5

In CPSA terminology, what distinguishes an architectural goal from a functional requirement?

Accepted Answer

Architectural goals address quality properties; functional requirements describe system behavior

Answer

Architectural goals focus on quality attributes like performance, security, and maintainability, while functional requirements describe what the system must do.

CPSA Exam Practice Test

CPSA Exam Practice Test

CPSA Architectural Goals and Constraints 2