Salesforce Updated MuleSoft-Platform-Architect-I Exam Questions and Answers by alessio

When managing high traffic to an API, especially with POST requests, it is crucial to ensure the API’s policies both protect the back-end systems and provide a smooth client experience. Here’s the approach to reducing errors:

Rate Limiting Policy: This policy enforces a limit on the number of requests within a defined time period. However, rate limiting alone may cause clients to hit limits during demand surges, leading to errors.

Adding an SLA-based Spike Control Policy:

Spike Control is designed to handle sudden increases in traffic by smoothing out bursts of requests, which is particularly useful during high-demand periods.

By configuring SLA-based Spike Control, you can define thresholds for specific client tiers. For instance, premium clients might have higher limits or more flexibility in traffic bursts than standard clients.

Why Option D is Correct:

Keeping the Rate Limiting policy continues to provide baseline protection for the back-end.

Adding the SLA-based Spike Control policy allows for differentiated control, where requests are queued or delayed during bursts rather than outright rejected. This approach significantly reduces error responses to clients while still controlling overall traffic.

Explanation of Incorrect Options:

Option A (adding Client ID Enforcement) would not reduce errors related to traffic surges.

Option B (HTTP Caching) is not applicable as caching is generally ineffective for non-idempotent requests like POST.

Option C (only Spike Control without Rate Limiting) may leave the back-end system vulnerable to sustained high traffic levels, reducing protection.

ReferencesFor more information on configuring Rate Limiting and SLA-based Spike Control policies, refer to MuleSoft documentation on API Policies and Rate Limiting​​.

Explanation

Correct Answer: When the response time of API invocations exceeds a threshold

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>> Alerts can be setup for all the given options using the default Anypoint Platform functionality

>> However, the question insists on an alert whose conditions depend on the end-to-end request processing of the API implementation.

>> Alert w.r.t "Response Times" is the only one which requires end-to-end request processing of API implementation in order to determine if the threshold is exceeded or not.

Explanation

Correct Answer: The credentials provided by the IdP for identity management

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Explanation

Correct Answer: JSON threat protection

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Fact: Technically, there are no restrictions on what policy can be applied in what layer. Any policy can be applied on any layer API. However, context should also be considered properly before blindly applying the policies on APIs.

That is why, this question asked for a policy that would LEAST likely be applied to a Process API.

From the given options:

>> All policies except "JSON threat protection" can be applied without hesitation to the APIs in Process tier.

>> JSON threat protection policy ideally fits for experience APIs to prevent suspicious JSON payload coming from external API clients. This covers more of a security aspect by trying to avoid possibly malicious and harmful JSON payloads from external clients calling experience APIs.

As external API clients are NEVER allowed to call Process APIs directly and also these kind of malicious and harmful JSON payloads are always stopped at experience API layer only using this policy, it is LEAST LIKELY that this same policy is again applied on Process Layer API.