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CBA — Backstage Catalog

22% of the CBA exam. Sample questions below; the full library has 26 questions tagged to this domain.

Sample questions on Backstage Catalog

Backstage Catalog

Q1. Several services, websites, and APIs belong to one business capability, and the platform team wants them grouped together. What is a System entity for?

Reveal answer and explanations
  1. A A logical boundary for related components and APIs

    Correct. A System represents a collection of related entities that together deliver a larger capability.

  2. B To configure instance-wide authentication providers

    Incorrect. Authentication configuration is separate from catalog System entities.

  3. C To manage database connection pools for plugins

    Incorrect. Database connection pools are infrastructure configuration, not catalog systems.

  4. D To represent the entire Kubernetes cluster that runs Backstage

    Incorrect. A System is a catalog model concept, not the Kubernetes cluster itself.

Backstage Catalog

Q2. When auto-discovering GitHub repositories using the GitHub catalog processor, what configuration is required to enable discovery?

Reveal answer and explanations
  1. A All GitHub repositories are automatically discovered and added to the catalog

    Incorrect. Discovery is configured; not all repositories are automatically included.

  2. B Discovery requires manual configuration of each repository URL in the app-config

    Incorrect. The whole point of auto-discovery is to avoid manual URL configuration.

  3. C The catalog processor must be enabled in app-config, and repositories must contain a 'catalog-info.yaml' file or match a discovery pattern

    Correct. The GitHub processor looks for catalog-info.yaml files or pattern-matched repositories to auto-discover entities.

  4. D Only repositories starred by the Backstage app owner are discovered

    Incorrect. Star status is not a discovery criterion.

Backstage Catalog

Q3. A repository owner adds catalog-info.yaml so Backstage can ingest a service into the software catalog. What should that file contain?

Reveal answer and explanations
  1. A A Kubernetes Pod manifest for deploying the service

    Incorrect. The descriptor format resembles YAML but is not a Kubernetes deployment manifest.

  2. B Entity metadata such as kind, name, owner, and relationships

    Correct. catalog-info.yaml is an entity descriptor that Backstage can ingest into the catalog.

  3. C The SQL schema used by the Backstage catalog database

    Incorrect. Database schemas are managed by backend plugins and migrations.

  4. D A global configuration file shared by every Backstage instance

    Incorrect. catalog-info.yaml describes one or more catalog entities; it is not global app configuration.

Backstage Catalog

Q4. What does entity validation in Backstage ensure, and at what point in the ingestion pipeline does it occur?

Reveal answer and explanations
  1. A Validation occurs after entities are indexed in search; invalid entities are removed from search results under standard configurations in practice

    Incorrect. Validation occurs earlier in the pipeline, before indexing.

  2. B Validation only checks for valid YAML syntax; it occurs during file parsing

    Incorrect. Validation goes beyond syntax to semantic conformance.

  3. C Validation ensures entities conform to their schema (Component, Service, API, etc.); it occurs after processing but before persistence

    Correct. Schema validation ensures data integrity; it's a gating step before persistence.

  4. D Validation is optional and can be disabled for faster ingestion

    Incorrect. Validation is a required step; it cannot be disabled.

Backstage Catalog

Q5. A team wants entities to link to dashboards and source metadata without changing the core catalog schema. What are annotations used for?

Reveal answer and explanations
  1. A Non-identifying metadata key-value pairs for entities

    Correct. Annotations attach arbitrary metadata strings, commonly for integrations and external references.

  2. B To configure logging levels for the Backstage backend process

    Incorrect. Backend logging is configured elsewhere.

  3. C To grant users permission to edit the entity

    Incorrect. Permissions are handled by Backstage permission policies, not catalog annotations.

  4. D To add YAML comments that Backstage ignores during ingestion

    Incorrect. Annotations are part of entity metadata, not ignored comments.

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How this domain is tested

Backstage Catalog accounts for 22% of the CBA exam. Expect questions that test recall of terminology and the ability to read short scenarios — not deep configuration. Use the sample questions above as difficulty calibration; if any feel hard, the rest of our 26-question domain bank will close those gaps.