RTS Questionnaire · Question 47 of 52 · file: answers/q47.html
Have you designed complex database architectures, including ER modeling, indexing, partitioning, replication, sharding, and performance optimization?
DatabasesPerformanceArchitecture
✅ Yes — database architecture and tuning are long-standing strengths across relational and NoSQL platforms.
🧪 Interactive proof: this answer has its own page with a live database-architecture workflow, the physical model as DDL, the topology with its recovery drills and the execution-plan assertions behind it — open the Q47 database-architecture proof →
Technical detail
- 🗂️ ER modelling and schema design — conceptual/logical/physical models, normalisation to 3NF with justified denormalisation for read performance, integrity constraints, audit/history strategy (temporal tables or event logs) and versioned migrations.
- ⚡ Indexing — clustered/non-clustered, composite and covering indexes designed from real query patterns, filtered indexes, included columns, index maintenance and fragmentation control, plus statistics management. Every decision is validated with execution plans, not intuition.
- 🧱 Partitioning — range/list/hash partitioning by date or tenant, partition switching for archiving, and partition-aware query design to keep working sets small.
- 🔁 Replication — primary/standby with streaming or log shipping, read replicas for scale-out reads, failover planning, backup/restore drills and point-in-time recovery.
- 🌐 Sharding — horizontal partitioning with a well-chosen shard key, routing strategy, rebalancing plan, and awareness of cross-shard query cost; or a deliberate NoSQL key design (DynamoDB partition/sort keys, Cassandra partition keys) that achieves the same distribution without a sharding layer.
- 📈 Performance optimisation — slow-query triage, plan analysis, query rewriting, caching layers, connection pooling, locking/blocking resolution and capacity planning with load evidence.
🧾 CV evidence: CV: 20+ years across Oracle, SQL Server, MySQL, PostgreSQL plus NoSQL (MongoDB, DynamoDB, DocumentDB, Neptune, Keyspaces/Cassandra); performance tuning listed as a core architectural competency; AWS Certified Database Specialty.