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CAP Theorem and Consistency Models Questions

Understand the CAP theorem and how Consistency, Availability, and Partition Tolerance interact in distributed systems. Know different consistency models including strong consistency such as linearizability, eventual consistency, causal consistency, and session consistency, and how to apply them to different use cases. Be familiar with consensus protocols and distributed coordination primitives such as Raft and Paxos, quorum reads and writes, two phase commit and when to use them. Understand trade offs between consistency and availability under network partitions, patterns for hybrid approaches where different data uses different guarantees, and the product and developer experience implications such as latency, stale reads, and API contract clarity.

HardTechnical
0 practiced
Describe how 'read-your-writes' session consistency can be implemented using logical clocks. How would you ensure the approach works across a set of stateless front-end servers that proxy requests to regional databases?
HardTechnical
0 practiced
Write a short plan for migrating a metadata service from a single-region strongly consistent store to a geo-distributed eventually-consistent store. Include steps to ensure data correctness, strategies for clients to handle eventual consistency, and rollback considerations.
MediumTechnical
0 practiced
You're responsible for a global analytics store that uses leaderless, quorum-based replication (Dynamo-style). Explain how hinted handoff and read-repair work together to ensure eventual consistency and reduce stale reads.
MediumTechnical
0 practiced
Explain two-phase commit (2PC) and its limitations in distributed systems. For a distributed ETL job that must update metadata in multiple services, when is 2PC appropriate and when should you prefer compensation-based patterns?
EasyBehavioral
0 practiced
As a data engineer, you need to explain to product stakeholders the difference between eventual consistency and strong consistency. Write a short paragraph (2-4 sentences) that focuses on user impact, stale reads, and latency trade-offs.

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