Questions and Answers of Systems Architecture

What’s the difference between a real resource and a virtual resource?
What are the goals of an OS resource allocation function? Describe the conflicts between them?
What characteristics or capabilities differentiate a bare-metal hypervisor from a virtualization environment?
Compare storage area networks and network-attached storage. Which is more common in environments where many servers in the same location access the same data?
In what way(s) is storage management with cloud-based storage services similar to L2 and L3 memory cache management?
Describe three low-level P2P interprocess communication standards. What are the advantages and disadvantages of using these standards to implement distributed multilayer applications?
Describe the main firewall types and how each can improve system security. What information does a system administrator need to configure a firewall correctly?
What are directory services? What types of information might be made available through directory services? Describe the LDAP standard.
Why are conventional methods of fire protection inadequate or dangerous for computer equipment?
What problems associated with electrical power must be considered in planning the physical environment for computer hardware?
Describe the functions of the kernel, service, and command layers of an OS.
How and why does a thread move from the ready state to the running state? How and why does a thread move from the running state to the blocked state? How and why does a thread move from the blocked
What is a process control block, and what is it used for?
What is a thread? What resources does it share with other threads in the same process?
Briefly describe the most common methods for making priority-based scheduling decisions.
What complexities are introduced by real-time scheduling requirements?
Describe the operation of virtual memory management.
What is memory protection, and why is it needed? What factors complicate it?
What is absolute addressing? What is indirect addressing?
What are the costs and benefits of indirect addressing?
List the FMS layers and describe their functions.
What’s the difference between the logical and physical structure of a file? What are the advantages of not having an application program interact directly with the physical file structure?
What file types does a file management system usually support?
What is an allocation unit? What are the advantages of using small allocation units? What are the disadvantages?
Describe the use of buffers in file I/O operations. When are buffers allocated? When are they released?
Describe a hierarchical directory structure. What are its advantages and disadvantages compared with a graph directory structure?
How is file deletion normally accomplished? What security problems might result from this method?
What levels of access rights can exist for a file?
What is transaction logging or journaling? Describe the performance penalty it imposes on file update operations.
Describe the levels of RAID. What are their comparative advantages and disadvantages?
Describe client/server, three-layer, and n-layer architecture. What are the differences between a client and a server? What is the function of each layer in a three-layer application? Why might more
What is a protocol stack? What are the components of a typical protocol in a client computer that can access many Web servers?
What are the differences between static and dynamic connections to remote resources? Which connection type requires a resource registry? Where should the resource registry be located?
An OS acts as both client and server. How are software components organized to perform both functions at the same time?
Do the terms Internet and Web describe the same thing?
What are the components of a URL?
How can the Internet be used as a platform to implement distributed multilayer applications? Which Internet and Web protocols are used, and how are they used?
What is a component? Component-based design and development have been the norm in manufacturing durable goods for decades. Why has this approach only recently been adopted for designing and deploying
Describe the COM+ and CORBA standards for component infrastructure and communication. Which standard would you choose to support a new large-scale information system? Why?
Describe the components of the Java EE architecture. What standards govern the form of the client and Web/business tiers? What standards govern communication between components? Is Java EE compatible
Describe the role of DNS in enabling dynamic connections. Could DNS function with a fully centralized directory server architecture? Why or why not?
Briefly describe the three most common approaches to cloud computing, and compare the risk levels and potential economic benefits of each approach.
What is infrastructure? In what ways do hardware and system software qualify as infrastructure?
What basic strategic planning questions should be addressed for infrastructure?
What are the advantages and disadvantages of standardization in hardware and system software?
What is a request for proposal (RFP)? How are responses to an RFP evaluated?
What problems are encountered when attempting to determine hardware and system software requirements for application software that hasn’t been developed yet?
What is a monitor? List types of monitors and the information they provide?
Describe authentication and authorization. Which depends on the other? How and why are these processes more complex in a networked organization than in an organization that supports all information
Why is it important to install OS and application software updates in a timely manner? How can users and system administrators ensure that they’re installed in a timely manner?
Describe the pros and cons of enabling auditing of resource accesses.
What is a virus? How can users and system administrators prevent virus infections?
What’s the difference between a front-end CASE tool and a back-end CASE tool?
What is a CASE tool? What’s the relationship between a CASE tool and a system development methodology?
What components are normally part of an IDE? In what ways does an IDE improve programmer productivity?
What are the main differences between OOP languages and traditional programming languages?
What are the shortcomings of 3GLs in meeting the requirements of modern applications?
Compare static and dynamic linking.
Compare error detection and correction capabilities in interpreters and compilers.
What types of programming statements are likely to be translated into machine instructions by a compiler? What types are likely to be translated into library calls?
What is a link editor? What is a compiler library? How and why are they useful in program development?
Compare the execution of compiled programs with interpreted programs in terms of CPU and memory utilization.
What does a compiler do when it encounters data declarations in a source code file? Data (manipulation) operations? Control structures?
Compare assemblers, compilers, and interpreters.
What are the differences between source code, object code, and executable code?
What is instruction explosion? What types of programming languages have the most instruction explosion? What types of programming languages have the least instruction explosion?
Describe the relationships between application development methodologies, models, and tools.
List past and present standards for wireless LANs. How do later standards improve on the earlier ones?
Describe the service quality problems that can occur in VoIP. Why are these problems so difficult to solve?
What protocols are commonly used to implement VoIP? Are all VoIP protocols compatible with one another?
Describe past, current, and proposed Ethernet standards in terms of transmission speed, supported transmission media, and relevant IEEE standards.
How many bits are in an IP address? What is a TCP or UDP port? What is a TCP or UDP socket?
Describe the processes of encapsulation and address resolution. Why are they necessary features of the Internet?
Describe the function of each layer of the TCP/IP model.
Compare frequency-division and time-division multiplexing. What physical characteristics of the communication channel does each technique require? Which provides higher data transmission capacity?
How does multilevel coding increase a channel’s effective data transfer rate?
Compare the generations and types of programming languages.
Describe a connectionless and a connection-oriented protocol, and list one example of each.
What is the function of a hub? How does it differ from a switch or router?
Compare CSMA/CD and CSMA/CA in terms of how collisions are detected or avoided and their inclusion in physical network standards.
How does a message from one LAN node find its way to a recipient on the same LAN? How does a message find its way to a recipient on another LAN?
Compare 802.11 and WiMAX wireless networks in terms of transmission distances and frequencies, strategies for dealing with noise and interference, and how widely they’re deployed.
What’s a block check character? How is it computed and used?
Describe the differences between even and odd parity checking.
What are the differences between synchronous and asynchronous data transmission?
Compare serial and parallel transmission in terms of channel cost, data transfer rate, and suitability for long-distance data communication. Why are standards for connecting secondary storage devices
Why is a channel’s actual data transfer rate usually less than the theoretical maximum of the technology used to implement the channel?
Describe simplex, half-duplex, and full-duplex transmission and compare them in terms of cost and effective data transfer rate.
What are the advantages of wireless transmission using RF waves compared with infrared and visible light waves?
Compare twisted-pair, coaxial, twin-axial, multimode fiber-optic, and single-mode fiber-optic cable in terms of construction, susceptibility to EMI, cost, and maximum cable segment length.
How can noise and distortion be introduced into a transmission medium? How does a channel’s S/N ratio affect the reliability of data transmission?
Describe the relationship between bandwidth, data transfer rate, and signal frequency.
Describe frequency modulation, amplitude modulation, phase-shift modulation, and on-off keying.
What are the components of a communication protocol?
What are the components of a communication channel?
Describe the components and functions of a typical sound card. How is sound input captured? How is speech output generated? How is the musical output generated?
Describe the process of automated speech recognition. What types of interpretation errors are inherent to this process?
What additional components are added to flat panel display to enable it to accept touch input?
Describe the types of optical input devices. For what type of input is each device intended?
How does a laser printer’s operation differ from that of a dot matrix printer?

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