Compare CDC variants: log-based, query-based, and trigger-based. What are the failure modes of each?
Plenty of candidates know only 'use Debezium.' The signal is comparing three CDC mechanisms on how each captures deletes, loads the source, and preserves ordering, plus the snapshot-to-stream stitching that trips up real deployments.
Updated Sep 2026 · Grounded in real GenAI, LLM, and AI/ML engineering interview loops and written to a senior-engineer editorial bar.
Plenty of candidates know only 'use Debezium.' The signal is comparing three CDC mechanisms on how each captures deletes, loads the source, and preserves ordering, plus the snapshot-to-stream stitching that trips up real deployments.
Lead with where the obvious approach breaks, because that is the judgment they are screening for — most candidates jump straight to the happy path and lose the room.
Then walk the failure back through the pipeline in order, naming the one metric the customer's exec sponsor actually cares about before you propose the fix.
