SF-Data-Arch Practice Exam 4 — 20 Questions

Question 1

An architect is choosing between storing a new data domain in a custom object versus using Big Objects in Salesforce. The dataset is expected to reach billions of records with append-only writes and infrequent, key-based reads. Which two characteristics make Big Objects the appropriate choice for this scenario? (Choose two.)

Choose an answer to begin — your selection is scored in the full session.

Accepted Answer

Big Objects provide an indexed, query-optimized access path for retrieving records by defined key fields.. Big Objects exist to handle data volumes beyond what custom objects can practically store, and they add an architect-defined index that makes key-based retrieval efficient at that scale. Together, scalability and indexed async query access are the two defining reasons to choose Big Objects for this append-only, high-volume domain.

Answer

Big Objects support full DML operations including update and delete through the standard user interface.

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Big Objects replicate data across every Salesforce instance for real-time reporting in standard reports.

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Big Objects allow roll-up summary fields and validation rules on the object.

Question 2

Universal Containers has a custom object Invoice__c with 8 million records. Users report that list views and reports filtering on the Invoice_Status__c picklist field are slow. The field is not indexed. What should the data architect do to improve query performance?

Accepted Answer

Create a custom index on the Invoice_Status__c field.. Custom indexes are the standard mechanism to improve query performance on large custom objects when filtering on a custom field. Because Invoice_Status__c is not indexed, queries perform full table scans across 8 million records. Requesting a custom index on that field allows the database to quickly locate matching rows, improving list view and report responsiveness without altering the data model or field type.

Answer

Convert the picklist to a text field and enable indexing.

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Enable the 'Allow Reports' setting on the field.

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Create a formula field that returns the picklist value and filter on that instead.

Question 3

A Salesforce data architect is asked to ensure that account records created by the sales team always include a valid 15-character or 18-character Salesforce ID in a custom external identifier field used by an ERP integration. The ERP rejects records without a valid ID. Which Salesforce feature should the architect use to enforce this at the point of data entry?

Accepted Answer

Validation rules on the Account object that verify the external identifier field is populated and matches the expected ID pattern.. Validation rules are the native Salesforce mechanism to enforce required values and format constraints at save time. A REGEX check can confirm the external identifier is a valid 15- or 18-character ID, blocking bad records before they reach the ERP. Triggers, field-level security, and email alerts do not prevent invalid data from being saved, so they cannot satisfy the integration requirement.

Answer

Field-level security settings that make the external identifier field required for all profiles.

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Apex triggers that call the ERP synchronously and roll back the transaction if the ERP rejects the record.

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A record-triggered flow that sends an email alert to the sales manager when the identifier is missing.

Question 4

A data architect is designing a data governance program for a Salesforce MDM implementation that spans Sales Cloud, Service Cloud, and an external data warehouse. Which two capabilities are essential to include in the governance model? (Choose two.)

Accepted Answer

A defined data stewardship role with authority to resolve match exceptions and approve merges.. A functioning MDM governance model needs both accountability and measurement. Stewardship assigns human ownership for resolving exceptions and approving merges, while defined quality dimensions and thresholds give the program objective success criteria. Integration patterns, UI standardization, and administrator-only editing are technical or operational choices that do not by themselves establish governance over master data.

Answer

Enabling Lightning Experience for all users to standardize the interface used for master data entry.

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A nightly full refresh of all Salesforce records into the data warehouse using Bulk API 2.0.

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Configuring field-level security so that only system administrators can edit any master data attribute.

Question 5

Universal Containers maintains customer master data in Salesforce and a legacy ERP. The data architect needs to ensure that when a customer's address is updated in Salesforce, the change is automatically reflected in the ERP within 15 minutes. The ERP does not support outbound calls. Which Salesforce feature should be used to achieve this near real-time synchronization?

Accepted Answer

Change Data Capture with a middleware subscribing to the change event stream. Change Data Capture provides a near real-time stream of record changes that an external middleware can consume and use to update the ERP. It is the most direct and scalable way to synchronize address changes without requiring the ERP to call Salesforce. Scheduled jobs and outbound messages introduce latency or require specific endpoints, while Platform Events add an unnecessary layer.

Answer

Platform Event published by a Process Builder on Account update

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Scheduled Apex job that queries modified Accounts and calls the ERP API

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Outbound Message on the Account object

Question 6

A data architect at Northern Trail Outfitters is designing a master data management solution where customer records from Salesforce and a legacy ERP must be consolidated into a single golden record. The architect must ensure that the most recent address is always used, but if the most recent address is from the legacy ERP, it should only be used if it has been verified. Which MDM concept should be implemented to achieve this?

Accepted Answer

Survivorship rules with trust scores. Survivorship rules with trust scores allow the MDM system to apply business logic such as 'most recent, but verified for legacy ERP' when consolidating records. Trust scores can be assigned based on data source and verification status, ensuring the golden record reflects the most reliable and recent information.

Answer

Deterministic matching

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Data lineage tracking

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Data stewardship workflows

Question 7

A healthcare organization is building a data governance program for its Salesforce org. The compliance officer wants a documented record of who owns each data domain, what the approved data definitions are, and how changes to those definitions are approved. Which artifact should the architect establish as the authoritative source for this information?

Accepted Answer

A data governance charter and data dictionary that define domain ownership, approved definitions, and the change-approval workflow.. The compliance officer is asking for documented accountability, agreed definitions, and a controlled change process. A governance charter defines the program's roles, decision rights, and approval paths, while a data dictionary records the approved definition and owner for each data domain. Together they form the authoritative governance reference that can be audited and maintained over time.

Answer

A Salesforce report listing all custom objects and their record counts.

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A set of validation rules that enforce data entry standards on key objects.

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An integration architecture diagram showing how data flows between Salesforce and external systems.

Question 8

An org has a custom object 'Invoice__c' with a Lookup to Account. Users frequently complain that deleting an Account leaves orphaned Invoice records, and reports show Invoices with no Account. The business wants the platform to prevent an Invoice from being saved without a valid Account. Which change should the architect make?

Accepted Answer

Convert the Lookup to a Master-Detail relationship from Invoice__c to Account.. A Master-Detail relationship enforces the parent reference at the data layer, so records cannot be saved without a valid Account and referenced Accounts cannot be deleted while children exist. This is the native way to eliminate orphaned child records across UI, API, and data-load paths.

Answer

Mark the Lookup field as required on the page layout only.

Answer

Create a validation rule that checks whether the Account field is blank.

Answer

Enable a duplicate rule that flags Invoices with a null Account.

Question 9

Universal Containers notices severe locking issues and transaction failures when updating a parent Account object that has over 15,000 child records in a master-detail relationship. What is the fundamental architectural cause of this behavior?

Accepted Answer

Parent-level database locks occur and cascade down to evaluate child records, causing row-level contention.. Master-detail relationships enforce strict parent-level locking during record saves to maintain relational integrity and roll-up summary calculations. When a parent record is updated, the platform locks the parent and cascades lock checks across associated child records. Having thousands of children spikes the probability of database contention, leading directly to row-level locking exceptions and transaction failures.

Answer

The platform automatically generates criteria-based sharing recalculations for every child record.

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Custom triggers on the child object execute recursively because of the master-detail cascading save mechanism.

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Roll-up summary fields exceed maximum calculation limits when evaluating more than 10,000 records.

Question 10

A data architect is designing a master data management strategy for customer data in Salesforce. The company wants to ensure data quality and consistency across systems. Which two practices should the architect recommend to maintain a single source of truth? (Choose two.)

Accepted Answer

Establish a data governance council to define policies and standards. A data stewardship program and a data governance council are both strategic practices that establish accountability and policies for master data. They ensure that data is managed consistently, which is essential for a single source of truth. The other options are either tactical tools or unrelated to data quality management.

Answer

Use Salesforce's duplicate management rules to prevent duplicate records

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Schedule nightly data backups of Salesforce

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Enable field history tracking on all customer fields

Question 11

A multinational company uses Salesforce across multiple regions. Each region has its own data retention requirements: the EU requires customer data to be deleted after 7 years, while the US requires retention for 10 years. The company wants to implement a data lifecycle governance policy that automatically enforces these retention periods. Which solution should the data architect recommend?

Accepted Answer

Implement a combination of Salesforce Shield Field Audit Trail for compliance and a custom batch process to archive and purge records according to regional policies.. The company needs region-specific retention enforcement with auditability. Field Audit Trail retains field history for compliance, while a custom batch process can archive and purge records according to each region's retention period. This approach provides the flexibility to implement different retention rules and maintains an audit trail, unlike native recycle bin or non-existent general retention settings.

Answer

Create a custom object to store retention policies and use scheduled Apex to delete records based on region-specific criteria.

Answer

Rely on the Salesforce recycle bin and set its retention period to 7 years for EU records and 10 years for US records.

Answer

Use Salesforce Data Retention policies in Setup to define region-specific retention rules and automate deletion.

Question 12

A Salesforce data architect is asked to recommend a native capability for detecting and merging duplicate person accounts created by multiple intake channels. Which Salesforce feature should the architect recommend as the primary tool?

Accepted Answer

Duplicate Rules combined with Matching Rules and the built-in merge interface.. Salesforce provides declarative Matching Rules and Duplicate Rules that evaluate candidate records on create and edit, plus a standard merge interface for consolidation. Together these cover both prevention and remediation natively. Validation rules, activity capture, and custom Apex each address something adjacent but not the core duplicate detection and merge requirement, so they cannot be the primary recommendation.

Answer

Einstein Activity Capture to reconcile duplicate activities across person accounts.

Answer

Validation Rules that block record creation when the last name matches an existing contact.

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A scheduled Apex batch job that compares Account.Name values using SOQL LIKE queries.

Question 13

A healthcare organization uses Salesforce to manage patient cases and must comply with HIPAA. The data governance team needs to ensure that audit trails for access to Protected Health Information (PHI) are comprehensive and tamper-evident. They are evaluating Salesforce Shield Event Monitoring and Field Audit Trail. Which combination of features should the team implement to meet the requirement for tracking who accessed PHI fields and when, while also retaining the audit data for 10 years?

Accepted Answer

Enable Field Audit Trail with a retention policy of 10 years, and use Event Monitoring to track field-level access events.. Field Audit Trail provides long-term retention of field history, up to 10 years, and tracks changes to PHI fields. Event Monitoring captures access events, including reads and exports, which are not covered by Field Audit Trail. Together, they deliver a complete audit trail for HIPAA compliance, ensuring both change and access tracking with the required retention.

Answer

Use Salesforce Shield Platform Encryption to encrypt PHI fields, which automatically generates audit logs for all access and retains them for 10 years.

Answer

Use Event Monitoring alone, as it captures all user activity including field-level changes, and set the retention period to 10 years.

Answer

Enable Field Audit Trail and configure it to also capture read access events, eliminating the need for Event Monitoring.

Question 14

A retail company wants to ensure that customer email addresses are consistently formatted and that invalid values are rejected at the point of entry across web, mobile, and integration channels. The data governance lead asks the architect which Salesforce feature provides a single, reusable definition of the validation that all channels can share. Which feature should the architect recommend?

Accepted Answer

A validation rule on the Contact object using a REGEX function to enforce a standard email pattern.. Validation rules are evaluated on every insert and update no matter which channel performs the write, so a REGEX-based rule gives one reusable definition of the email format standard. It prevents invalid values from being saved, which is what the governance policy requires. Formula fields, duplicate rules, and notification flows either do not validate or act only after the fact.

Answer

A duplicate rule that matches contacts with similar email addresses.

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A formula field that concatenates the email domain with a fixed suffix.

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A record-triggered flow that sends a notification to the data steward when the email is malformed.

Question 15

Universal Containers maintains a single Salesforce org used by sales teams across North America, EMEA, and APAC. Each region has its own legal requirements for how long personal data may be retained. The VP of Sales wants one consistent retention policy applied everywhere to simplify administration. As the data architect, what should you recommend?

Accepted Answer

Define region-specific retention rules in the governance policy and enforce them through record segmentation and automated deletion processes.. Retention requirements that vary by jurisdiction demand a governance policy that encodes those differences rather than flattening them. Segmenting records by region and applying automated retention jobs per segment allows one org to comply with multiple legal regimes. This approach keeps the policy centralized and auditable while respecting local law, which is the core purpose of a data governance framework in a multi-region Salesforce deployment.

Answer

Retain all personal data indefinitely because Salesforce storage is inexpensive and deletion carries operational risk.

Answer

Implement a single global retention schedule for all personal data records and document it in the data governance policy.

Answer

Delegate all retention decisions to regional sales managers and let each team manage its own data without a central policy.

Question 16

A Salesforce architect is migrating 1 million Case records with related Case Comments from a legacy system. The legacy system stores comments in a separate table linked by a legacy Case ID. The architect plans to use the Bulk API to load Cases first, then load Case Comments in a second pass. During the test, the architect realizes that the legacy Case ID is not stored in Salesforce after the first load, making it impossible to link comments to the correct Cases. What should the architect have done to enable this relationship?

Accepted Answer

Create a custom external ID field on the Case object to store the legacy Case ID, populate it during the Case load, and then use that field to relate Case Comments during the second load.. To link Case Comments to Cases in a two-pass migration, the architect must store the legacy Case ID on the Case record as an external ID. This allows the second load to use that external ID to look up the parent Case and correctly associate comments. Without it, the relationship cannot be established, leading to orphaned comments.

Answer

Export the Salesforce Case IDs after the first load, map them back to the legacy Case IDs in the source system, and then load Comments with the new Salesforce IDs.

Answer

Load Cases and Case Comments simultaneously using a single Bulk API job with nested JSON to preserve relationships.

Answer

Use the Salesforce Data Loader's 'Insert' operation for Cases and then use 'Update' for Comments, relying on Salesforce's automatic relationship matching.

Question 17

A Salesforce data architect is migrating 500,000 Lead records from a legacy system. The legacy data contains a field 'Lead_Status' with values such as 'New', 'Working', 'Qualified', 'Unqualified'. Salesforce's Lead Status picklist has values: 'Open - Not Contacted', 'Working - Contacted', 'Closed - Converted', 'Closed - Not Converted'. The architect needs to map the legacy values to the Salesforce picklist values. Which approach should be used to ensure a successful migration?

Accepted Answer

Use an ETL tool to map legacy values to the corresponding Salesforce picklist values before loading.. Mapping legacy values to the standard Salesforce picklist values must occur before loading to avoid errors and ensure data consistency. An ETL tool provides the necessary transformation capabilities. Other options either avoid the mapping, cause load failures, or alter the Salesforce schema unnecessarily.

Answer

Load the legacy values as-is and then run a batch Apex job to update the Lead Status field.

Answer

Create a custom field to store the legacy Lead Status and leave the standard Lead Status blank.

Answer

Modify the Salesforce Lead Status picklist to include the legacy values.

Question 18

A Salesforce data architect is preparing to migrate 5 million Account records from a legacy CRM. The legacy system has a field 'Legacy_Owner__c' that contains the email address of the account owner. During migration, the architect must ensure that the ownership is assigned to the correct active Salesforce User. Which approach should be used to map the legacy owner email to the Salesforce User ID?

Accepted Answer

Create a custom field on Account to store the legacy owner email, then use a post-load process or Data Loader to update OwnerId based on a User lookup.. To map legacy owner emails to Salesforce User IDs, the architect should first load Accounts with the legacy email stored in a custom field. Then, using a lookup or ETL transformation, the correct User IDs can be determined and applied to the OwnerId field. This two-step process avoids errors and ensures accurate ownership assignment.

Answer

Load the email addresses into the OwnerId field directly; Salesforce will automatically resolve them to User IDs.

Answer

Use the Data Loader's 'Bulk API' with the 'Assignment Rule' option enabled to automatically assign owners based on email.

Answer

Load the legacy owner email into the Account Owner field using the 'External ID' feature of the User object.

Question 19

A nonprofit needs to record donations. Each donation is made by exactly one donor Account, and the organization wants a Donor's lifetime giving total displayed on the Account record itself, updated automatically whenever a Donation is created or edited. What should the architect configure?

Accepted Answer

A roll-up summary field on Account that sums the Amount field of related Donation records, with Donation in a Master-Detail relationship to Account.. Roll-up summary fields exist to aggregate values from detail records onto a master record. With Donation in a Master-Detail relationship to Account, the architect can create a roll-up summary field on Account that sums the Amount field of all related donations. The total updates automatically on insert, update, and delete, with no code and no scheduled job.

Answer

A trigger on Donation that posts the Amount to a custom field on Account using an aggregate SOQL query.

Answer

A scheduled Flow that runs nightly to query all Donations and update a numeric field on each Account.

Answer

A cross-object formula field on Account that sums the Amount field of all related Donation records.

Question 20

A financial services firm stores portfolio holdings in a custom object with 4 million records. Analysts frequently filter holdings by Account and by a calculated risk score derived from multiple fields on the holding record. The architect wants to minimize query time when users filter by risk score in list views and reports. Which approach should the architect take?

Accepted Answer

Create a numeric custom field to store the risk score, populate it via a before-save record-triggered flow, and request a custom index on that field.. To filter efficiently on a computed value at scale, the value must be stored in a field that can carry a custom index. A before-save record-triggered flow updates the stored field without extra DML, and a custom index lets list views and reports filter on it quickly. Formula fields, roll-up summaries, and Big Objects cannot provide indexed filtering on a per-record calculated score.

Answer

Create a formula field for the risk score and rely on Salesforce to index it automatically for filtering.

Answer

Create a roll-up summary field on a parent object to calculate the risk score and filter on the parent.

Answer

Enable Big Object storage for the holdings and query it with SOQL to improve filter performance.