200-901 Software Development and Design Practice Question
Which THREE of the following are benefits of using event-driven architecture in a distributed system? (Choose three.)
Answer choices
Why each option matters
Answer the question above first, then reveal the full breakdown to understand why each option is right or wrong.
Correct answer & explanation
✓
Loose coupling between services
Option A is correct because in event-driven architecture producers emit events without knowing which consumers will handle them, so services interact only through the event channel rather than direct API calls, achieving loose coupling. Option B is correct because events are published and consumed as they occur, enabling real-time data processing and immediate reaction to state changes rather than relying on periodic polling or batch jobs. Option C is correct because each consumer or event processor can be scaled independently and events can be distributed across multiple partitions or instances, providing scalability through independent processing. Option D is not correct because event-driven systems typically depend on message brokers or event streaming platforms such as Kafka, RabbitMQ, or Amazon SNS/SQS to route, buffer, and deliver events. Option E is not correct because event-driven communication is inherently asynchronous, and debugging is generally more complex due to distributed tracing, eventual consistency, and the need to correlate events across services.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✓
Loose coupling between services
Why this is correct
Event-driven architecture decouples producers from consumers through an asynchronous broker, so services publish events without knowing subscribers. This satisfies the loose coupling benefit: components interact via events rather than direct calls, allowing independent scaling, deployment and failure isolation without cascading dependencies across the distributed system.
- ✓
Real-time data processing
Why this is correct
Event-driven architecture publishes events the instant they occur, letting consumers process them as they arrive rather than on a polling schedule. This satisfies the stem's distributed-system benefit of real-time data processing, since decoupled producers and consumers react immediately without synchronous request-response blocking or batch delays.
- ✓
Scalability through independent processing
Why this is correct
Event-driven architecture decouples producers from consumers, so each service scales independently as message volume grows. This satisfies the distributed system's scalability constraint: components process events asynchronously without blocking one another, letting you scale only the overloaded consumer rather than the entire application.
- ✗
Eliminates the need for message brokers
Why it's wrong here
Event-driven architecture typically depends on brokers or event buses to route and buffer events between decoupled producers and consumers, so it does not remove that component. It is tempting because decoupling producers from consumers reduces direct point-to-point coupling, which is a genuine benefit, but broker infrastructure remains.
- ✗
Simpler debugging due to synchronous communication
Why it's wrong here
Event-driven architecture decouples producers from consumers via asynchronous messaging, so a synchronous request/response chain cannot describe its benefits. Debugging actually becomes harder, since tracing spans brokers and queues rather than one call stack. Synchronous communication suits simple request/response APIs where immediate, ordered replies matter.
Go deeper
Related to this question
About these practice questions
One of 975 original 200-901 practice questions on Courseiva, each with a full explanation and wrong-answer analysis — not exam dumps or protected exam content. Learn why practice questions differ from exam dumps →
JA
Written by Johnson Ajibi, MSc IT Security
Senior Network & Security Engineer · founder of Courseiva
This 200-901 practice question is part of Courseiva's free Cisco certification practice question bank. Courseiva provides original exam-style practice questions with explanations, topic-based practice, mock exams, readiness tracking, and study analytics to help learners prepare for the 200-901 exam.