List of 30 Web Architect Interview Questions & Answers
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1.
Please describe the ACID properties of a database used in web architecture.
Why the Interviewer Asks This Question
Interviewers will frequently ask you about acronyms commonly used in this profession. Acronyms enable people to communicate more efficiently and effectively in any profession or industry. The interviewer is interested in learning about your understanding of the acronyms as an indicator that you have experience in the industry and the qualifications needed for this job.
How to Answer
When responding to an interviewer's question about an acronym, you can format your answer by breaking down the acronym into its individual components and defining each one of these. Since you can't assume that the interviewer has a strong technical background or understanding of this job, you should use easy-to-understand language when defining the acronym. As with any technical question, be prepared for a follow-up in case the interviewer needs more information or wants to explore this topic in more detail.
William's Answer
"The acronym ACID stands for Atomicity, Consistency, Isolation, and Durability. Atomicity ensures an all-or-none rule for database modifications. Consistency addresses the issue of values being consistent across the databases the website accesses. Isolation relates to each transaction being independent of one another. Durability ensures that data is not lost even in the case of a server failure."
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2.
What is HTTP session replication?
Why the Interviewer Asks This Question
One of the key concerns of organizations is that their websites provide 100% availability and uptime. Interviewers will ask you questions like this to ensure that you know how to architect the website to achieve this goal. Since this functionality is critical to the organization, the interviewer will likely ask you follow-up questions about the topic and explore it in more detail. They may also ask related questions such as different approaches to achieving this goal and what features you can design into their website to ensure that it is always available.
How to Answer
As an experienced web architect, responding to this type of question should be no problem. However, if you're new to the profession and haven't used session replication in your previous roles, this may be a challenging question. Whenever you are unfamiliar with the topic or don't know the answer to an interviewer's question, the best response is to admit this and then describe how you would locate the information. Interviewers will appreciate your honesty.
William's Answer
"HTTP session replication is a process that creates a primary session state on the webserver. This is the first point the web user connects to. A second session state that is a replica of the first is then created on another server instance in the cluster. The replica is always kept up-to-date so that it may be used if the server that hosts the original instance fails. Both instances need to be in the same cluster for this to function properly."
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3.
What is meant by lower latency interactions?
Why the Interviewer Asks This Question
Organizations expect you to architect websites that are both functional and perform as well as possible. Interviewers will ask you about latency since it is a key element of the website's performance. Your ability to reduce latency will give the interviewer insight into how proficient you are and architecting well-performing websites.
How to Answer
Since this is a technical question, your response should be brief and to the point. Since the interviewer only asks for a definition of this term, you do not need to detail how you accomplish low latency. Just ensure that your answer demonstrates your understanding of the concept.
William's Answer
"The term low latency refers to a minimal delay between the time a user requests something and the time the website responds. If the site employs WebSockets, the data can be sent quicker because a TCP connection has already been established, so no extra packet roundtrips are required. Optimizing the latency of a website improves its performance and provides a better user experience."
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4.
Can you describe a microservice architecture and discuss its advantages?
Why the Interviewer Asks This Question
When interviewing for the role of a web architect, the interviewer seeks to learn as much as they can about your approach to designing websites. The purpose of this question is to determine if you use microservices as one of your architectural development styles. Your answer to the question will help the interviewer determine if you have the qualifications necessary for this role.
How to Answer
Even if you don't use the microservices architectural development methodology, you should still be able to describe what it is and discuss some of its advantages. If you prefer other methods, be prepared to discuss why you don't use this style and the advantages of the methodologies you use. Interviewers appreciate your ability to describe and defend your choices and confirm that you use the methodology they are inquiring about.
William's Answer
"Microservices architecture is a web development style which creates an application as a group of small autonomous services. Some of the advantages of using microservices include their compatibility with other web development technologies, including other development frameworks, libraries, and databases, and their ability to isolate faults, preventing them from crashing the entire site. They also can be deployed independently and in less time."
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5.
Can you tell me what an XML market data service is and how it interacts with outside entities?
Why the Interviewer Asks This Question
Interviewers will ask you this question if you are interviewing for a role to create transactional-based websites. These can include eCommerce sites, stock trading services, or other applications where the website's function depends on feeds from external sources. The interviewer is interested in whether you have experience in this area and can discuss the relationship between the services and external data sources.
How to Answer
If you have experience developing transactional websites, this should be an easy question for you to answer. If your experience is limited and you know you're applying for a role that will require this, you should conduct a great deal of research before the interview. You may even want to create some practice sites that leverage this technology so you will be familiar with the processes and the challenges you are likely to encounter.
William's Answer
"An XML market data service is an application that enables the user to perform transactions using external data. XML external entities are a type of XML entity whose values are obtained from outside of the document type definition in which they are declared and are defined based on the contents of the file path or URL. This typically involves market data, such as stock trading or eCommerce."
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6.
Can you explain how OAuth works?
Why the Interviewer Asks This Question
During an interview, interviewers constantly seek to understand your talents, knowledge, experience, and competencies. Hiring new employees is an expensive process, so interviewers will take a great deal of time to ensure that the candidate is the most appropriate person for this job. This is why you are likely to interview with several different interviewers within an organization before being offered a position.
How to Answer
Since you are likely to be interviewed by several different individuals within an organization when applying for a position, it is recommended that you keep your answers brief, to the point, and use simple and easy-to-understand language. Some interviewers will be using a script provided by the hiring manager to determine your qualifications. They may not understand the technology they are inquiring about but rather are looking to gauge how confident you are and how easily you answer the question. Keep this in mind when responding to an interviewer's questions.
William's Answer
"OAuth is an authentication protocol that allows a website to approve one application interacting with another on a user's behalf without compromising their password. OAuth doesn't share user data but rather uses authorization tokens to prove a user's identity to service providers. This enables one website to act as a proxy to another when using applications such as e-commerce."
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7.
Can you describe common web security attacks and how your web designs protect against them?
Why the Interviewer Asks This Question
Second only to a website crashing is the threat of security attacks against the site. Malicious individuals and organizations continually attack websites to gain access to proprietary company information and personal data they can use to enrich themselves. Interviewers want to ensure that you have concrete methodologies to prevent this from happening. They are also looking to learn about your experience in this area and how you reacted to cyber security threats in your previous jobs.
How to Answer
The best way to answer this question is to provide a brief overview of your understanding of the importance of defending a site against cyber security threats and then describe the measures you take to prevent this. Keep your answer brief and to the point, as with any operational question. Due to the importance of this issue, the interviewer is likely to ask use several follow-up questions to explore your qualifications in more depth. You should also prepare several examples of how you prevented or responded to cyber-attacks in your previous jobs before attending the interview.
William's Answer
"Unfortunately, cyber threats are an increasingly serious concern for web architects. Hackers are becoming more sophisticated, and their threats' nature is constantly evolving. As a web architect, I need to stay abreast of the latest trends in cyber security and the methodologies hackers use to attract a website. I employ several different defenses to prevent threats, including denial of service, man-in-the-middle, SQL injections, zero-day exploitations, cross-site scripting, and other similar attacks. Techniques I use include robust user authentication, firewalls, complex password requirements, and educating the website's users. These have been effective in my previous roles and have resulted in zero successful attacks in my last three jobs."
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8.
What is an API gateway?
Why the Interviewer Asks This Question
Once the interviewer begins to ask questions about a certain topic, they may proceed to ask similar questions. These can be a standalone question or a follow-up of their original inquiry. By doing this, the interviewer indicates that the topic they are asking about is important to the organization. They seek to confirm your understanding of the topic and explore your knowledge in this area. It is not unusual for an interviewer to remain on a single topic for a long time or even for a large portion of the interview. This may occur if the hiring manager has indicated that the person who previously held this job had a problem in this area.
How to Answer
Regardless of how many times an interviewer asks you about the same topic, you should continue to answer in a calm, consistent manner. Keep your answer direct and to the point, and anticipate a follow-up question. Always remember to use simple, easy-to-understand language during an interview since you are not aware of the technical competence of all the interviewers. If you sense that the interviewer does not understand your responses, you can ask a clarifying question or offer to explain the answer differently.
William's Answer
"An API gateway is a tool that sits between a web client and the website's backend services. It acts as a reverse proxy, accepting all application programming interface calls, routing them to the web services required to fulfill them, and returning the appropriate results. API gateways can access all the website's resources, but typically interact with microservices in the web architecture."
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9.
Please discuss eventual consistency.
Why the Interviewer Asks This Question
Interviewers will sometimes ask you about concepts related to the job for which you are interviewing but not exclusively. They expect you to answer in the context of the job and to limit your answer to this. If you respond to their question by defining the concept in a different context, it will raise a red flag and indicate that you may not be qualified for this position. This is one of the key reasons they ask this type of question.
How to Answer
When responding to an ambiguous question about a term that is not exclusive to the role of a web architect, be sure to limit your answer to how the concept or phrase is used in this job. The interviewer is only interested in your knowledge and experience related to the role for which you are interviewing. Expanding your answer to other uses of the concept will dilute your answer and prompt the interviewer to wonder if your understanding of the concept is not sufficient for this role.
William's Answer
"The concept of eventual consistency is an abstract assurance that all reads of an object within a website will eventually return the most recent value. An example of this is the Domain Name System (DNS) which directs users to the same website if they enter the same or closely similar request. Some of the variations to the eventual consistency model include causal consistency, read-your-writes consistency, session consistency, monotonic read consistency, and monotonic write consistency."
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10.
How does CORS work?
Why the Interviewer Asks This Question
Cross-origin resource sharing, or CORS, is a key operational component of websites. Interviewers will ask you about this and other technologies to confirm that you have an in-depth knowledge of website architectures and can incorporate these technologies into your designs. They are likely to ask many technical questions like this throughout the interview.
How to Answer
Since this is a technical question, you need to keep your answer brief and to the point. Elaborating on the answer or providing too much information could actually work against you. The interviewer may begin to lose interest in your response, or worse, you may give them information that will enable them to proceed in a different direction in which you may not be as knowledgeable. The interviewer can always ask a follow-up question if they need additional information.
William's Answer
"CORS, which stands for cross-origin resource sharing, allows resources on a web page to request resources from another domain outside the domain from which the resource was originally obtained. These resources can include cross-origin images, stylesheets, scripts, iframes, and videos. CORS defines how a browser and server can interact to determine whether it is safe to allow the cross-origin request. Some cross-domain requests may be blocked if the website has a same-origin security policy."
William's Answer
"CORS, which stands for cross-origin resource sharing, allows resources on a web page to request resources from another domain outside the domain from which the resource was originally obtained. These resources can include cross-origin images, stylesheets, scripts, iframes, and videos. CORS defines how a browser and server can interact to determine whether it is safe to allow the cross-origin request. Some cross-domain requests may be blocked if the website has a same-origin security policy."
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11.
What is Javascript prototyping, and how do you incorporate it into your web design plans?
Why the Interviewer Asks This Question
Not all websites are architected linearly. Often, architects need to try new methodologies in website features they have not used before. This is known as prototyping. Interviewers will ask you how you use prototyping to better understand your development methodologies. They also want to make sure you are open to innovation and trying new things. Being flexible and willing to learn are characteristics interviewers look for in job applicants.
How to Answer
As an experienced web architect, you've probably used prototyping methodologies in your work. Therefore, answering this question should be easy. When responding, make sure you follow the structure of the question. First, define JavaScript prototyping and then describe how you use it. This will make it easier for the interviewer to follow your answer.
William's Answer
"A Javascript prototype is an object associated with the corresponding Javascript functions and objects. The function's prototype property is accessible and adaptable but not visible to visitors to the site. This enables developers to create and test new features of the site in a production environment. A prototype's purpose is to create a sample, model, or release of a website feature to test the concept or process. I use Javascript prototypes for a variety of purposes, including semantics, design, and links to external resources."
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12.
Can you compare WebAPI vs. Microservices?
Why the Interviewer Asks This Question
During an interview, the interviewer will often ask several different questions about the same topic. This indicates they have a special interest in this topic because it is either important to the work they do, or they've encountered some challenges with it. Questions about the same subject do not necessarily occur sequentially and may be disbursed throughout the interview. This enables the interviewer to raise other issues during the interview with which these questions may be related.
How to Answer
If you notice that an interviewer continues to ask questions about the same topic, you should conclude that this is important to the organization. You may want to confirm this by asking the interviewer a clarifying question. Once you have identified a topic important to the interviewer, you can begin to provide more information in your answers than you normally would. Asking clarifying questions during an interview will also help to demonstrate your interest in the organization and passion for this position.
William's Answer
"Microservices and web application programming interfaces or APIs are similar in function but differ in structure. Microservices are an architectural style for web applications whereas. APIs are the frameworks through which developers can interact with web applications. A microservice is a small, single-service constructed of individual components. A microservice can be delivered through an API, which is a method of communication between a user and the website using the website's IP address."
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13.
How do you use a Traffic Manager, and how does this differ from a load balancer?
Why the Interviewer Asks This Question
You are being interviewed for a web architect's position to help the organization optimize its website and provide its resources to the targeted clients. An interviewer will ask you about traffic management and load balancing to confirm that you understand these concepts and know how to include them in your web designs. Since both are fundamental functions necessary to provide both a good user experience and prevent overloading portions of the website, you should be able to discuss these in great detail.
How to Answer
When presented with a question that asks you to compare two technical features of a website, you should first respond by explaining what each of these does. You can then proceed to discuss their differences. Your response should indicate that while both technical features are useful, they need to be employed for a specific purpose. Your answer may also include all of these features complement each other and can be used to achieve a common objective.
William's Answer
"The purpose of Traffic Manager is directing web client requests to the most appropriate web resource by using a Domain Name Server, or DNS. A load balancer examines the health of the endpoints and then applies a traffic-routing method to distribute the traffic. Both are useful in expediting a user's request to the appropriate resources, but only the load balancer ensures the website's overall performance is optimized. If you combine the two while employing virtual machines to host the website, you get exceptional user experiences, global traffic management, and local failover to ensure continuous access to the website's resources."
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14.
Please tell me about how you address disaster recovery in your web designs.
Why the Interviewer Asks This Question
The worst thing that can happen to a website is for it to crash. Not only will this make the site unavailable to the clients, but it could also result in a loss of data or other information critical to the organization. Interviewers will ask many questions about your ability to prevent this during an interview for a web architects position. They want to ensure that your designs include disaster recovery plans and steps to help prevent a disaster from occurring.
How to Answer
As an experienced web architect, you should be able to easily discuss how to implement disaster recovery plans for the websites you design. Your answer should include how you architect DR plans and what resources you use to respond to a website disaster. You may also want to include examples of how you implemented this in your previous roles.
William's Answer
"When architecting a website, I prioritize measures to ensure that the website maintains five-nines reliability and can be recovered if the disaster were to occur. The fundamental premise of this is to create backup websites with continual replication. Much of this is accomplished utilizing internal company resources. However, I often recommend additional backup and replication through third-party services such as Microsoft Azure, AWS, and other DR service providers."
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15.
Which do you prefer, SOAP or JMS?
Why the Interviewer Asks This Question
When an interviewer asks you about two similar technologies used in website architecture, it may be for several reasons. The first is to determine which of these you prefer and are likely to use in your web design. The second is to determine what your preferences align with those of their organization. Finally, they may be looking for someone who can bring new ideas and innovations to their organization.
How to Answer
Since you don't know the motivation behind this question, the best strategy is to respond truthfully and accurately. This enables the interviewer to evaluate your response in the context of their operations. You can confirm this by asking a clarifying question after you provide your answer. This may lead to a discussion about the suitability of the methodology their organization currently uses vs. incorporating some new ideas into their web designs in order to improve their operations.
William's Answer
"While I used to advocate for the java messaging service, I now prefer SOAP in my web architectures. While it enables distributed communication that is loosely coupled, reliable, and asynchronous, SOAP is more flexible because it allows distributed elements of an application to communicate a variety of lower-level protocols, including HTTP. SOAP can use a JMS-compliant transport with SOAP messages to enable interoperability between the implementations of different vendors."
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16.
Please discuss the difference as well as pros and cons of compiled vs. interpreted languages.
Why the Interviewer Asks This Question
The interviewer is likely to ask you to compare similar but different technologies throughout the interview. This helps them better understand your knowledge and competencies. It also provides them with information about the technologies you are likely to use or advocate for if hired for this position. While organizations tend to look for candidates familiar with and employ technologies they currently use, they may also be interested in alternatives to these that the candidate can bring with them.
How to Answer
When preparing for an interview, you should thoroughly research the organization, the technologies they employ, and the products they use to architect and implement their web designs. This will provide you with a context within which you can frame your answers. You should not hesitate to advocate a technology different from what the organization currently uses since they may be looking to bring in somebody who can innovate and update their web design operations.
William's Answer
"The key difference is between a compiled and interpretive language is the speed of execution. A compiled language needs to be converted into machine code so a computer processor can execute the commands. This is done in advance and results in the program being executed directly by the CPU immediately. On the other hand, an interpreted language executes commands directly without having to compile the program into machine language. While this process is more direct, it doesn't take advantage of the speed of execution offered by machine language. Therefore, compiled programs run faster than interpreted programs."
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17.
How would you describe the difference between a web architect and a web developer?
Why the Interviewer Asks This Question
The terms web architect and web developer are often used interchangeably. However, each job has distinct duties and responsibilities. The interviewer will ask this question to determine if you are aware of these and can clearly define each role. This is important since professionals performing each of these jobs need to collaborate in order to produce an effective and efficient website.
How to Answer
When asked to compare any two items during an interview, your response should be the same. You start by defining each item and then discuss their differences or similarities. As with any technical or operational question, keep your answer brief and to the point and anticipate a follow-up question.
William's Answer
"While both web architects and web developers play key roles in creating a website, their duties and responsibilities differ. Web developers create the website's core structure using coding languages. Web architects and designers are more visually creative and user-focused. We focus on the look and functionality of the website and provide the general parameters the developers need to create code for. You can think of developers as builders who create a home using the architect's plans and specifications."
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18.
Please discuss the pros and cons of REST vs. SOAP.
Why the Interviewer Asks This Question
During an interview, some of the questions you are asked may sound similar to ones you are asked earlier in the interview. Interviewers will ask similar questions about the topic in more depth to correlate your answers. The more questions the interviewer asks about a specific topic, the more likely it is critical to the organization's operations. They want to make sure that you can address this issue appropriately if hired.
How to Answer
Even though some questions may sound similar to each other, they may, in fact, be different. This is why it is critically important for you to carefully listen to the interviewer's questions completely before starting to respond or even constructing a response to your mind. A good practice is to mindfully pause for at least two seconds before beginning to answer the interviewer's question. This will help you be a better listener and ensure that you are answering that question the interviewer asked.
William's Answer
"The key difference between REST and SOAP is that SOAP is an Object Access Protocol whereas REST is a State Transfer consisting of a set of architectural principles and is not a sanctioned protocol. SOAP requires more bandwidth than REST which doesn't need much bandwidth. Also, SOAP will only work with XML formats whereas REST can work with formats including plain text, XML, HTML, and JSON."
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19.
Please describe a tech stack and discuss what it is used for.
Why the Interviewer Asks This Question
Interviewers are only likely to ask this question if you are interviewing for an entry-level web architect role. However, they may also use it as an opening question early in the interview to start a conversation, learn more about your background, and collect information they can use later in the interview. During the interview, interviewers will ask questions ranging from very basic to very complex. They typically will move from the easy to the more difficult questions as the interview progresses, and they become more confident in your capabilities.
How to Answer
Regardless of whether the questions are easy or difficult, you should always structure your answers in the same manner. Keep them short and to the point, and use simple, easy-to-understand language. This will ensure that the interviewer will understand your answer. They will ask follow-up questions if they require additional information or want to explore the topic in more detail.
William's Answer
"A tech stack, which is sometimes referred to as a solutions stack or technology infrastructure, is a list of the technology services a web developer uses to create and operate a single application within a website. I can consist of entities including programming languages, frameworks, a database, backend tools, front-end tools, applications, and APIs."
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20.
What is a clustered index?
Why the Interviewer Asks This Question
Even though the primary function of a web architect is to create the overall concept and design for the website, you still need to be familiar with the technologies a web developer incorporates into their work to create their design. Interviewers are likely to ask you about a wide variety of technologies used to build websites. This demonstrates that you understand how the developers will ultimately create the site you have designed.
How to Answer
Even though you may be familiar with the technologies used in website development, it is still a good idea to review these before the interview, so they are fresh in your mind. If, for some reason, you are not familiar with a technology the interviewer asks you about, feel comfortable admitting this to them, and then describe how you would learn about the technologies you will be using in this job.
William's Answer
"A clustered index is an index which defines the physical order in which the table of records is organized in a database. Since records are physically stored in a database table in only one way, there is one clustered index per table. A clustered index is created on a primary key column by default. Clustered indexes differ from non-clustered indexes because a non-clustered index is a special type of index in which the logical order does not match the physical order of the rows in the table."
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21.
What are some of the tools do you use to architect a website?
Why the Interviewer Asks This Question
It is highly likely that you will be asked about the tools you use in every single interview you attend. And if you're as well as those for two reasons. First, they want to ensure that you are familiar with common web architecture tools and know how to use them. They are also interested in whether you use the same tools as their current web design team. This is important since it will accelerate your integration into the team.
How to Answer
Before an interview, you should spend a great deal of time researching the organization, its operations, and the type of websites it develops. This will give you insight into their processes, the tools they use, and the technologies you will need to be familiar with to be qualified for this position. The better prepared you are before the interview the more likely you will have a successful interview and be offered the job.
William's Answer
"When you ask about the tools required to architect the website, I assume you are referring to architecture diagramming tools that help the designers and developers visualize the layout of the website. Some of the tools I prefer for this include Microsoft Visio. PowerMapper, DYNO Mapper, OmniGraffle, Xtreeme, and SiteXpert. Ironically, one of my most effective tools is a whiteboard. This enables me to communicate my architecture to the developers and also allows us to collaborate on the final design."
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22.
Does serialization break singleton property in Java?
Why the Interviewer Asks This Question
The interviewer is asking you a question about a technology that you do not use as a web architect but that you need to be familiar with when designing websites. No matter how talented you are or how impressive your website design is, it still needs to be practical to be able to be created by web developers. This requires you to be familiar with the technology developers use and how it impacts your website designs.
How to Answer
The more familiar you are with the technology used to create your designs, the more effective your web of architectures will be. Therefore, it is in your best interest to learn as much about these as you can. As you gain experience in this area, you will better understand how to implement these technologies within your designs to improve their functionality and appearance. This will also help you prepare for the interviewer's questions, which will, in turn, make it more likely that you'll be hired for this job.
William's Answer
"Yes, serialization can cause breakage of singleton property in Java. Serialization is used to transform an object and either save it or rout it to another entity. if you serialize a singleton class and then de-serialize the object, a new instance will be created, thereby breaking the singleton property."
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23.
What is scalability?
Why the Interviewer Asks This Question
During an interview for a web of architects position, you will be asked many questions about the technologies involved with developing a website. Interviewers want to ensure that you have the background and experience for this job. They will explore this by asking you technical questions and evaluating how well you respond to them. While nobody can know every single technology involved in creating websites, they expect you to be familiar with the major ones and be able to describe them in simple, easy-to-understand language.
How to Answer
When responding to a technical question, you should keep your answer brief and to the point. Embellishing your answer or adding additional details not relevant to the original question may make it seem like you're making up the answer or not answering truthfully. Interviewers prefer direct and simple answers to their questions. They will ask a follow-up question if they need more information or want to explore the topic in more detail.
William's Answer
"Scalability is the ability of a website to handle increasing demand or views by adding additional resources. This can be done in two ways. The first is to scale up, which involves adding more resources to existing website applications, such as more memory, storage, or network connections. The second is scaling out, which is replicating the existing resources to handle the increasing demand. The cost of adding resources may vary, depending on the type and number of resources required to handle the load. Web architects need to take this into account in their initial design."
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24.
What is a cluster? Why do you need clustering?
Why the Interviewer Asks This Question
Interviewers expect you to be aware of and able to employ the most recent developments in web technologies. While clustering is not a web technology per se, it does support websites and web applications. It can be used to increase these capabilities and performance. Interviewers will ask you questions not directly related to web architecture but which address technologies and techniques web architects can use to optimize their designs.
How to Answer
When preparing for an interview as a web architect, make sure to review not only technologies directly related to web design but also other information technologies which support websites. These can be applications, storage-related, networking and communication technologies, or anything else that enables users to access websites and utilize their resources. Being familiar with these and keeping them front of mind will help you perform better during the interview.
William's Answer
"Computer clustering is the grouping of two or more computers, or nodes, running in parallel to achieve a performance goal. Clustering is used to achieve high availability and increased performance for software and web applications. Clustering results in 100% availability and zero downtime for a website. When architecting a website, I leverage clustering to ensure that the resources provided to the site are always available to the user."
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25.
Do you use Domain-Driven Design when architecting a website? Can you describe what this is?
Why the Interviewer Asks This Question
The interviewer is asking you an operational question to determine how you go about performing this job. When asking you about a specific website design methodology, they may be curious whether you use processes and procedures similar to those used by their organization. They either want you to comply with their current operations or be able to bring some innovative new ideas to the organization.
How to Answer
Your research into the company, its operations, and the tools they use will provide you with the background needed to respond to this question. You can find the information you need to prepare for the interview from the company's website, industry publications, and blogs and from speaking with current and former members of the company's website architecture team.
William's Answer
"Domain-Driven Design is a website architecting methodology for the development of complex sites whose focus is mapping activities, tasks, events, and data within a domain containing tasks and challenges into the technology resources and other items of a domain containing solutions for these. The concept behind this methodology is making the website mimic a similar real-world system or process."
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26.
What is the Single Responsibility Principle (SRP), and how do you use this in your designs?
Why the Interviewer Asks This Question
Throughout the interview, the interviewer will ask you questions related to how you perform this job. Some of these will be technical, asking you about concepts, tools, and technologies you use. Others will be operational, which explore the methodologies, processes, and procedures you use to complete your assigned tasks. Your answer to these questions provides the interviewer with a complete picture of your capabilities and qualifications.
How to Answer
You may have already recognized this is a technical question inquiring about a concept used by web architects. This indicates that you should keep your answer brief and to the point, anticipating a follow-up question from the interviewer. Also, make sure your answer corresponds to the operations and technologies used by the organization. This will help the interviewer begin to picture you in the role.
William's Answer
"The concept of single responsibility refers to a class doing one specific thing, known as its responsibility, and not attempting to do anything more than it is responsible for. This is known as high cohesion. Often, classes start out with high cohesion, but after several iterations with multiple developers updating them, they evolve into a low cohesion class. This can be corrected by refactoring the class."
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27.
What are some of the differences between a binary semaphore and a mutex?
Why the Interviewer Asks This Question
The interviewer will ask you more complex and ethical questions as the interview progresses. This is a natural progression and indicates that the interviewer is gaining confidence in your capabilities and is willing to challenge you more. Regardless of the difficulty of the question, continue to answer it in a similar manner. This will demonstrate your ability to be consistent throughout the interview.
How to Answer
When faced with a difficult question, you may or may not have all the information necessary to answer it. If you know part of the answer but not the complete answer, the best way to respond is to provide the information you already know and then describe how you would find the information you don't know. This is a better strategy than not answering the question or fabricating the information you are not aware of.
William's Answer
"A mutex, which stands for mutual exclusion, is a mechanism used to synchronize access to a resource. It only allows a single task, thread, or process to access the mutex. Ownership is associated with the mutex, and only the owner can release the lock.
A binary semaphore is a signaling mechanism that indicates the task is finished using the resource. A binary semaphore can be signaled by any thread, whereas a mutex can only release the thread it owns. This is the key difference between these."
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28.
What is sticky session load balancing, and how does this relate to the concept of session affinity?
Why the Interviewer Asks This Question
One of the key elements of an effective website is its ability to engage users and encourage them to stay on the site, exploring its resources, offerings, and other elements. This is how organizations generate revenues through their websites. Your understanding of this and your ability to incorporate these principles into our web architectures is of great interest to the interviewer. They are likely to ask you several questions similar to this one about this concept.
How to Answer
This is a complex question since it asks you about one technology and then requests that you compare it to another similar one. You can frame your response by first defining sticky session load balancing and then briefly defining session affinity. You can follow this by pointing out how these two concepts relate to each other and their differences.
William's Answer
"A sticky session is a popular load balancing technique that requires a user session to be served by an allocated server. Normally, a load-balanced server stores user information in a session. It makes the session data available to all servers. Sticky sessions avoid this by always serving a particular user session request from a single server. The server becomes associated with a session as soon as it is created. All the requests in a particular session are always redirected to the designated server. This is typically accomplished using the sessionId cookie. The cookie is sent to a client on the first request. Every ensuing request by the same client must contain the same cookie."
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29.
What are some of the issues related to a sticky session?
Why the Interviewer Asks This Question
This can either be a standalone or a follow-up question. Interviewers ask follow-up questions to explore a topic in more detail or collect more information. Follow-up questions can be asked immediately after a question they relate to or at any point later in the interview. If asked later in the interview, it either indicates that the topic is important to the interviewer, or they are trying to correlate your answers and making sure you are consistent throughout the interview. Keeping your answers brief and to the point will help you achieve consistency.
How to Answer
Follow-up questions should be responded to the same way the initial question was. If it's a technical or operational question, keep your answer brief and to the point. If it is a behavioral or situational question, you can use the STAR methodology to formulate your answer.
William's Answer
"The primary issue you may face you may encounter when employing the sticky session methodology is that the browser the client is using may not support cookies or they have disabled them. In this case, the load balancer will not be able to identify the session a request belongs to. This will cause strange behavior for the user. Another issue is that if the server with the user information fails, it will be lost, and there will be no way to recover the user session."
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30.
Can you describe what SOLID stands for in the context of web architecture and discuss some of its principles?
Why the Interviewer Asks This Question
Interviewers can ask a variety of questions throughout the interview. These can include technical, operational, situational, behavioral, or general questions. Normally, interviewers will start with general questions and work toward more specific technical and operational questions. They will then finish up with either behavioral or situational questions. However, since there is no set script for an interview, you need to prepare for any question at any time.
How to Answer
When preparing for an interview, you should carefully review the concepts, terminology, operations, and procedures used in this role. While you can't be expected to know all of these, being familiar with the most popular ones will help prepare you for the interview. This review will also keep the information top of mind. You may even want to develop some notes you can use during the interview. If you plan to do this, always ask for permission from the interviewer before using your notes.
William's Answer
"SOLID is an acronym for the first five object-oriented design principles developed by Robert C. Martin. These are:
Single responsibility principle. A class should have only one job.
Open-closed principle. Objects should be open for extension but closed for modification.
Liskov substitution principle. Let q(x) be a property provable about objects of x of type T. Then q(y) should be provable for objects y of type S where S is a subtype of T.
Interface segregation principle. A client should not implement or depend on an interface or method that it doesn't use.
Dependency inversion principle. Entities must depend on abstractions, not on concretions, meaning that a high-level module should not depend on a low-level module."