TPM Technical Expertise and Understanding 5

Question 1

A TPM is reviewing a database schema where engineers want to store JSON blobs in a relational column for flexibility. What is the primary trade-off to communicate?

Accepted Answer

JSON columns sacrifice queryability, indexing efficiency, and schema enforcement for flexibility

Answer

While JSON columns offer schema flexibility, they make it difficult to query specific fields efficiently, enforce data integrity, and leverage relational indexes.

Question 2

Which networking concept is most important for a TPM to understand when a service experiences intermittent timeouts under high load?

Accepted Answer

TCP connection pool exhaustion, where available connections are depleted and new requests queue or fail

Answer

Under high load, connection pools can be exhausted; new requests queue for an available connection and eventually time out if the pool is undersized for peak concurrency.

Question 3

A TPM is leading a team adopting Kubernetes. Which aspect of Kubernetes is most directly relevant to achieving high availability for a critical service?

Accepted Answer

Configuring replica sets with pod disruption budgets and spreading pods across availability zones

Answer

Replica sets ensure multiple pod instances run simultaneously, pod disruption budgets protect minimum availability during updates, and zone spreading prevents a single AZ failure from taking down the service.

Question 4

What is the key difference between symmetric and asymmetric encryption, and when would a TPM encounter asymmetric encryption in practice?

Accepted Answer

Symmetric uses a single shared key for both encryption and decryption; asymmetric uses a public/private key pair — used in TLS handshakes and digital signatures

Answer

Symmetric encryption is faster but requires secure key exchange; asymmetric solves the key exchange problem using a key pair, which is why TLS uses asymmetric to establish a session and then switches to symmetric.

Question 5

A TPM is conducting a technical review of a proposed real-time streaming pipeline. The team suggests using Apache Kafka. Which characteristic of Kafka most directly supports this use case?

Accepted Answer

Kafka provides a durable, ordered, replayable log that decouples producers from consumers and supports high-throughput streaming

Answer

Kafka's core abstraction is a durable distributed log with configurable retention, enabling high-throughput event streaming, consumer group parallelism, and the ability to replay events.

(TPM) Technical Program Manager Certification Practice Test

(TPM) Technical Program Manager Certification Practice Test

TPM Technical Expertise and Understanding 5