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🇺🇸 AWS Certified Solutions Architect · subject

AWS Certified Solutions Architect Application Integration and Modern Architectures Syllabus

The Application Integration and Modern Architectures syllabus for AWS Certified Solutions Architect in full: 3 chapters, 9 topics and 22 sub-topics, every one listed below, plus 52 Application Integration and Modern Architectures flashcards with answers.

3Chapters
9Topics
22Sub-topics
52Flashcards

Application Integration and Modern Architectures syllabus: all 3 chapters

Expand any chapter to see its topics and sub-topics.

  1. Messaging and Event-Driven Design

     3 topics
    • Queue and Notification Services
      • SQS visibility timeout and long polling
      • SNS topics, subscriptions, and filtering
      • SQS-SNS fan-out integration pattern
    • Event Routing and Orchestration
      • Amazon EventBridge buses and rules
      • AWS Step Functions state machines
      • Choreography vs orchestration patterns
    • Streaming and Real-Time Processing
      • Kinesis Data Streams shards and consumers
      • Amazon MSK (managed Kafka) use cases

  2. API and Microservices Architectures

     3 topics
    • API Layer Design
      • API Gateway REST, HTTP, and WebSocket APIs
      • Throttling, caching, and usage plans
      • AppSync GraphQL APIs
    • Container Orchestration Patterns
      • ECS service discovery and task definitions
      • EKS networking and ingress
      • ECR image management
    • Serverless Application Patterns
      • Lambda integration with API Gateway and EventBridge
      • Synchronous vs asynchronous invocation models

  3. Caching, CDN, and Static Content

     3 topics
    • Application Caching Strategies
      • Lazy loading vs write-through with ElastiCache
      • DynamoDB DAX in-memory acceleration
    • Content Delivery Architectures
      • S3 static website hosting with CloudFront
      • Origin Access Control and signed URLs/cookies
    • Decoupled Web Tier Patterns
      • Static frontend with serverless backend
      • Multi-tier reference architectures

AWS Certified Solutions Architect Application Integration and Modern Architectures flashcards — 52 questions with answers

  1. What is Amazon SQS and what core problem does it solve in distributed systems?

    Amazon Simple Queue Service (SQS) is a fully managed message queue that lets you decouple and scale microservices by buffering messages between producers and consumers, so components can fail or scale independently without losing work.

  2. What are the two SQS queue types and their key differences?

    Standard queues offer nearly unlimited throughput, at-least-once delivery, and best-effort ordering. FIFO queues guarantee exactly-once processing and strict ordering but are limited to 300 messages/sec (or 3,000/sec with batching, up to 70,000 with high-throughput mode).

  3. What is the SQS visibility timeout and what is its default and maximum value?

    It is the period during which a received message is hidden from other consumers so it isn't processed twice. Default is 30 seconds; maximum is 12 hours.

  4. What is an SQS dead-letter queue (DLQ) and how is it triggered?

    A DLQ is a separate queue that receives messages a consumer fails to process successfully. It is triggered when a message exceeds the source queue's maxReceiveCount (redrive policy), isolating poison-pill messages for debugging.

  5. What is the difference between SQS short polling and long polling?

    Short polling returns immediately, sampling only a subset of servers (may return empty even when messages exist). Long polling waits up to WaitTimeSeconds (max 20s) for messages, reducing empty responses, API calls, and cost.

  6. What is the maximum message size and retention period in SQS?

    Maximum message size is 256 KB (larger payloads use the Extended Client Library with S3). Retention ranges from 60 seconds to 14 days, defaulting to 4 days.

  7. In SQS FIFO queues, what are message group ID and deduplication ID used for?

    Message group ID groups related messages so ordering is preserved within each group (and groups process in parallel). Deduplication ID prevents duplicate messages within a 5-minute deduplication window for exactly-once delivery.

  8. What is Amazon SNS and what messaging pattern does it implement?

    Amazon Simple Notification Service (SNS) is a managed pub/sub messaging service. Publishers send messages to a topic, and SNS pushes (fans out) copies to all subscribed endpoints such as SQS, Lambda, HTTP/S, email, and SMS.

  9. Describe the SNS-to-SQS fan-out pattern and why it is used.

    A single message published to an SNS topic is delivered to multiple SQS queues subscribed to it. This lets several systems process the same event asynchronously, decoupling producers from consumers and persisting messages durably in each queue.

  10. What is the difference between SNS Standard and FIFO topics?

    Standard topics give high throughput, best-effort ordering, and at-least-once delivery. FIFO topics preserve strict ordering and exactly-once delivery, and can only deliver to SQS FIFO queues.

  11. What is SNS message filtering and what advantage does it give subscribers?

    Filter policies let each subscription receive only messages whose attributes (or message body) match the policy, so subscribers get a relevant subset without filtering in application code—reducing unnecessary processing and cost.

  12. What is Amazon EventBridge and how does it differ from SNS?

    EventBridge is a serverless event bus that routes events from AWS services, SaaS apps, and custom sources to targets using content-based rules. Unlike SNS, it offers schema discovery, a schema registry, event archive/replay, and richer JSON content filtering.

  13. What are the three types of event buses in EventBridge?

    The default bus (receives AWS service events), custom buses (for your application events), and partner/SaaS event buses (receive events from integrated third-party SaaS providers).

  14. What is an EventBridge rule and what two things can it specify?

    A rule matches incoming events using an event pattern (or runs on a schedule) and routes matched events to one or more targets. It defines both the matching criteria and the destination(s).

  15. What is the EventBridge Schema Registry used for?

    It stores and organizes event schemas (including auto-discovered ones) and can generate code bindings, letting developers understand event structure and build strongly typed integrations against events.

  16. What is EventBridge Pipes used for?

    EventBridge Pipes creates point-to-point integrations between a source and a target with optional filtering, enrichment, and transformation—reducing the glue code needed to connect services like SQS, DynamoDB Streams, or Kinesis to a target.

  17. What is AWS Step Functions and what problem does it address?

    Step Functions is a serverless orchestration service that coordinates multiple services into workflows using a state machine, managing sequencing, branching, parallelism, error handling, and retries without custom orchestration code.

  18. Compare Step Functions Standard and Express workflows.

    Standard workflows are durable, can run up to 1 year, support exactly-once execution, and are priced per state transition—ideal for long-running, auditable processes. Express workflows run up to 5 minutes, support high event rates, are priced by execution count/duration, and suit short, high-volume tasks.

  19. Name the main state types available in Step Functions.

    Task, Choice (branching), Parallel, Map (iterate over a collection), Wait, Pass, Succeed, and Fail.

  20. What is the Saga pattern and how does Step Functions support it?

    The Saga pattern manages distributed transactions through a sequence of local transactions, each with a compensating action to undo work on failure. Step Functions implements it using Catch/compensation states to roll back prior steps when a later step fails.

Show the other 32 Application Integration and Modern Architectures flashcards

  1. What is Amazon Kinesis Data Streams and what is its core unit of capacity?

    Kinesis Data Streams is a service for real-time ingestion and processing of streaming data. Its capacity unit is the shard, each supporting 1 MB/sec or 1,000 records/sec ingest and 2 MB/sec read.

  2. How long can data be retained in a Kinesis Data Stream?

    From a minimum of 24 hours up to a maximum of 365 days, allowing multiple consumers to replay records within the retention window.

  3. What is the role of the partition key in Kinesis Data Streams?

    The partition key determines which shard a record is written to (via hashing). Choosing a high-cardinality key spreads records evenly to avoid hot shards; records with the same key go to the same shard, preserving order per key.

  4. What is Kinesis enhanced fan-out and what benefit does it provide?

    Enhanced fan-out gives each registered consumer its own dedicated 2 MB/sec read throughput per shard via a push (HTTP/2) model with ~70 ms latency, instead of sharing the standard 2 MB/sec across all consumers.

  5. Compare Kinesis Data Streams and Kinesis Data Firehose.

    Data Streams is for custom real-time processing with manual shard management, sub-second latency, and replay. Firehose is a fully managed near-real-time (buffered, ~60s) delivery stream that loads data directly into destinations like S3, Redshift, OpenSearch, or Splunk with no shard management.

  6. When should you choose Amazon SQS over Kinesis Data Streams?

    Choose SQS for decoupling with simple per-message processing where each message is deleted after handling and ordering/replay aren't central. Choose Kinesis when you need ordered, replayable streaming, multiple consumers reading the same data, or real-time analytics over a sequence of records.

  7. What is Amazon MSK?

    Amazon Managed Streaming for Apache Kafka (MSK) is a fully managed service that provisions, configures, and maintains Apache Kafka clusters, letting you run Kafka-compatible streaming workloads without managing the underlying infrastructure.

  8. What are the main endpoint types supported by Amazon API Gateway?

    REST APIs (full-featured), HTTP APIs (lower latency and cost, simpler), and WebSocket APIs (bidirectional real-time communication).

  9. What is the difference between API Gateway REST APIs and HTTP APIs?

    REST APIs offer more features (API keys, request/response transformation, WAF, usage plans, caching). HTTP APIs are cheaper and lower latency with a leaner feature set, optimized for proxying to Lambda and HTTP backends.

  10. What types of authorizers can API Gateway use to secure endpoints?

    IAM (SigV4), Lambda (custom/token or request authorizers), and Amazon Cognito user pools. HTTP APIs also support JWT authorizers natively.

  11. What is API Gateway throttling and how do usage plans relate to it?

    Throttling limits request rate and burst to protect backends, returning 429 when exceeded. Usage plans associate API keys with throttling and quota limits per client, enabling tiered access and monetization.

  12. What is API Gateway caching and what benefit does it provide?

    Stage-level response caching stores endpoint responses for a configurable TTL (0–3600s), reducing calls to the backend, lowering latency, and improving scalability for repeated identical requests.

  13. What is the difference between API Gateway edge-optimized and regional endpoints?

    Edge-optimized routes requests through CloudFront edge locations for geographically distributed clients. Regional endpoints serve clients in the same region with lower latency and let you manage your own CloudFront distribution if desired.

  14. What is AWS AppSync and which API style does it provide?

    AppSync is a managed service for building GraphQL (and Pub/Sub) APIs. It connects to data sources like DynamoDB, Lambda, and RDS, supports real-time subscriptions, and handles offline data sync for mobile and web apps.

  15. Compare Amazon ECS and Amazon EKS.

    ECS is AWS's proprietary container orchestrator—simpler, deeply AWS-integrated. EKS is managed Kubernetes—portable, with the rich Kubernetes ecosystem but more operational complexity.

  16. What are the two launch types / capacity options for Amazon ECS?

    EC2 launch type (you manage the cluster of EC2 container instances) and AWS Fargate (serverless—AWS provisions compute per task, no instance management).

  17. What is AWS Fargate and what is its main advantage?

    Fargate is a serverless compute engine for ECS and EKS that runs containers without you provisioning or managing servers. You specify CPU/memory per task and pay only for those resources, eliminating cluster capacity management.

  18. In ECS, what is the difference between a task definition, a task, and a service?

    A task definition is the blueprint (container image, CPU/memory, ports, IAM role). A task is a running instance of that definition. A service maintains a desired number of running tasks and integrates with load balancers and scaling.

  19. What is an ECS task role versus a task execution role?

    The task role grants permissions to the application code running inside the container (e.g., to call S3/DynamoDB). The task execution role grants the ECS agent permissions to pull images from ECR and write logs to CloudWatch.

  20. What is Amazon ECR?

    Elastic Container Registry is a fully managed Docker/OCI container image registry that stores, encrypts, scans, and serves images with IAM-based access control, integrating natively with ECS, EKS, and Lambda.

  21. What is the AWS Lambda execution model and what triggers invocations?

    Lambda runs stateless functions in response to events, automatically provisioning and scaling compute. Triggers include API Gateway, S3, DynamoDB Streams, SQS, SNS, EventBridge, Kinesis, and many other services.

  22. What are the current AWS Lambda limits for timeout, memory, and deployment package size?

    Maximum timeout is 15 minutes; memory ranges 128 MB–10,240 MB (CPU scales with memory); deployment package is 50 MB zipped/250 MB unzipped, or up to 10 GB via container image. The /tmp space is up to 10 GB.

  23. What is a Lambda cold start and how can you mitigate it?

    A cold start is the added latency when Lambda initializes a new execution environment (downloads code, starts runtime, runs init). Mitigate with Provisioned Concurrency (pre-warmed environments), smaller packages, and SnapStart for supported runtimes.

  24. What is the difference between Lambda reserved concurrency and provisioned concurrency?

    Reserved concurrency caps the maximum simultaneous executions for a function (guaranteeing/limiting capacity). Provisioned concurrency pre-initializes a set number of execution environments to eliminate cold starts for predictable low-latency response.

  25. How do Lambda synchronous and asynchronous invocations differ in retry behavior?

    Synchronous (e.g., API Gateway) returns the result immediately and the caller handles retries. Asynchronous (e.g., S3, SNS) queues the event and Lambda automatically retries twice on failure, optionally sending failures to a DLQ or on-failure destination.

  26. Compare Amazon ElastiCache for Redis and for Memcached.

    Redis supports persistence, replication, read replicas, multi-AZ failover, pub/sub, sorting, and complex data types. Memcached is simpler, multi-threaded, and good for a pure, scalable, non-persistent cache with multiple nodes/sharding but no replication or persistence.

  27. Explain the cache-aside (lazy loading) strategy and one drawback.

    The application reads from the cache first; on a miss it loads from the database, writes the value to cache, and returns it. Only requested data is cached. Drawback: the first request always misses (cold cache) and data can become stale unless a TTL or invalidation is used.

  28. Explain the write-through caching strategy and one drawback.

    Every write updates the cache and the database synchronously, so the cache is always current. Drawback: it adds write latency and the cache may hold rarely read data, increasing memory usage (cache churn).

  29. What is DynamoDB Accelerator (DAX) and when is it appropriate?

    DAX is a fully managed, in-memory, write-through cache specifically for DynamoDB that delivers microsecond read latency. Use it for read-heavy, eventually-consistent workloads needing faster reads without changing application API calls (it's DynamoDB-API compatible).

  30. What is Amazon CloudFront and what is an edge location's role?

    CloudFront is a global content delivery network (CDN) that caches content at edge locations near users to reduce latency. Edge locations serve cached content and forward cache misses to the origin, also providing TLS termination and DDoS protection.

  31. What is an Origin Access Control (OAC) / Origin Access Identity in CloudFront?

    It restricts an S3 bucket so content is only accessible through CloudFront, not via direct S3 URLs. OAC is the current recommended mechanism (replacing the legacy OAI), enforcing that users go through the CDN.

  32. What is the difference between CloudFront and AWS Global Accelerator?

    CloudFront caches HTTP/S content at edge locations and is ideal for cacheable web content. Global Accelerator does not cache; it uses the AWS global network and Anycast IPs to route any TCP/UDP traffic to the nearest healthy endpoint, improving performance and failover for non-cacheable, dynamic, or gaming/IoT workloads.

AWS Certified Solutions Architect Application Integration and Modern Architectures FAQ

What is in the AWS Certified Solutions Architect Application Integration and Modern Architectures syllabus?

AWS Certified Solutions Architect Application Integration and Modern Architectures is split into 3 chapters: Messaging and Event-Driven Design, API and Microservices Architectures and Caching, CDN, and Static Content. Together they contain 9 topics and 22 sub-topics.

How many chapters are in AWS Certified Solutions Architect Application Integration and Modern Architectures?

3 chapters, containing 9 topics and 22 sub-topics. The largest chapter is Messaging and Event-Driven Design, with 3 topics.

Are there flashcards for AWS Certified Solutions Architect Application Integration and Modern Architectures?

Yes — a 52-card Application Integration and Modern Architectures deck, printed in full in the flashcards section of this page and available in the Examius app with spaced repetition. The free plan covers one exam of your choice, including its flashcards; Examius Pro, a one-time purchase, unlocks every other exam and deck.