Solutions Architect Mock Interview

Master 33 Solutions Architect interview questions covering system design, cloud platforms, and technical trade-offs.

Question 28 of 33

When would you use a NoSQL database, and when would using a relational database be better?

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William Swansen has worked in the employment assistance realm since 2007. He is an author, job search strategist, and career advisor who helps individuals worldwide and in various professions to find their ideal careers.

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William Swansen

"Relational databases such as Oracle are based on transaction-oriented data stores and are the most commonly used for most applications. They are flexible and applicable to many different situations. The issues with relational databases are their performance and ability to scale when dealing with large data sets. NoSQL databases are more applicable in situations requiring high availability, applications dealing with terabytes or petabytes of data, and where querying and inserting information to and from the database is required."

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33Solutions Architect Interview Questions & Answers

Creative Thinking

1.Can you describe a creative solution to a challenging problem you developed in your role as a solutions architect? (Begin Here)

Communication

2.How would you describe Amazon Web Services (AWS) to someone outside of the IT organization?

Experience

3.What are some of the steps you recommend to protect an organization from a DOS attack?

Behavioral

4.What is your strategy for securing the IT assets and intellectual property of an organization?

Compatibility

5.What do you believe your role is concerning supporting the organization's functional analysts?

Communication

6.Can you explain CAP Theorem?

Communication

7.Please discuss some of the differences between asynchronous and parallel programming?

Behavioral

8.How do you ensure that the software you develop will scale?

Experience

9.What are the advantages of using a NoSQL database instead of an RDBMS?

Compatibility

10.What is a lower latency interaction, and why is it desirable in an application?

Discovery

11.Do you subscribe to the theory of 'Fail Early and Fail Forward?'

Compatibility

12.Please explain domain-driven design.

Compatibility

13.What are the benefits of clustering?

Technical

14.What does the acronym ACID stand for?

Technical

15.How is the term Deadlock used in your role as a solutions architect?

Technical

16.What is meant by the Single Responsibility Principle, and how do you use this in your work?

Technical

17.What are the differences between a binary and mutex semaphore?

Education

18.How do you define high availability, and what are some steps you take to ensure this?

Technical

19.What Do You Mean By "Session Affinity, and how does this relate to the concept of sticky session load balancing?

Technical

20.Are there any issues with employing sticky sessions in your systems architecture?

Technical

21.How are DRY and DIE principles used in software engineering?

Technical

22.Can you define the acronym SOLID and discuss its key principles?

Technical

23.What does system resiliency refer to, and how do you achieve this?

Behavioral

24.Do you prefer to create programs aligned with interfaces or implementations, and why?

Technical

25.Please discuss the concept of Elasticity as used in your role as a solutions architect and how it contrasts with scalability.

Technical

26.Can you describe some of the differences between concurrency and parallelism?

Technical

27.What are monolithic, SOA and microservices architectures, and how do they differ from one another?

Technical

28.When would you use a NoSQL database, and when would using a relational database be better?

Leadership

29.Can you describe a key project you recently led as a solutions architect?

Creative Thinking

30.Please talk about a time when you analyzed a difficult problem and came up with an innovative solution.

Experience

31.Describe how your training and experience have prepared you to succeed as a Solutions Architect.

Experience

32.Give an example of where you used an architecture framework. What characteristics were helpful, and what characteristics were not helpful?

Behavioral

33.Give an example where you worked in collaboration with other departments on solution architecture to shape up a project? What went well? What went wrong?