Selected MCIA-Level-1 MuleSoft Certified Architect Questions Answers

Explanation

Context of the question is about managing and governing mule applications deployed on Anypoint platform.

Anypoint API Manager (API Manager) is a component of Anypoint Platform that enables you to manage, govern, and secure APIs. It leverages the runtime capabilities of API Gateway and Anypoint Service Mesh, both of which enforce policies, collect and track analytics data, manage proxies, provide encryption and authentication, and manage applications.

Mule Ref Doc : 

To design a caching strategy that queries the database only when there is an update to the Employees table, follow these steps:

• On Table Row Operation: Configure an On Table Row operation to monitor the Employees table for updates.
• Invalidate Cache: When the On Table Row operation detects an update, trigger the invalidate cache operation to clear the cache.
• Object Store Caching Strategy: Use an object-store-caching-strategy to store the cached responses.
• Default Expiration Interval: Use the default expiration interval for the cache, which ensures that cached data is invalidated based on the detection of changes in the Employees table rather than a fixed time interval.

This strategy ensures that the cache is only invalidated when there are actual changes in the Employees table, thereby minimizing redundant transactions and optimizing database performance.

References

• MuleSoft Documentation on Caching Strategies
• Best Practices for Database Integration with MuleSoft

Explanation

Correct answer is Use a Batch job scope to bulk insert records into the database

* Batch Job is most efficient way to manage millions of records.

A few points to note here are as follows :

Reliability: If you want reliabilty while processing the records, i.e should the processing survive a runtime crash or other unhappy scenarios, and when restarted process all the remaining records, if yes then go for batch as it uses persistent queues.

Error Handling: In Parallel for each an error in a particular route will stop processing the remaining records in that route and in such case you'd need to handle it using on error continue, batch process does not stop during such error instead you can have a step for failures and have a dedicated handling in it.

Memory footprint: Since question said that there are millions of records to process, parallel for each will aggregate all the processed records at the end and can possibly cause Out Of Memory.

Batch job instead provides a BatchResult in the on complete phase where you can get the count of failures and success. For huge file processing if order is not a concern definitely go ahead with Batch Job

A design-first approach in API development focuses on creating a detailed API specification before any implementation begins. This specification acts as a contract that defines the API's endpoints, request/response formats, and error codes. By developing this specification early, potential consumers can provide feedback, and testing can be conducted against mock implementations to ensure the API meets their needs. This approach helps identify issues early in the development process, improving the likelihood of successful implementation and adoption.

References:

• API Design Best Practices
• Design-First API Development