Foundation questions
What is the difference between the XDM Individual Profile and XDM ExperienceEvent classes?
Individual Profile is a record class for attributes that describe a person; ExperienceEvent is a time-series class for time-stamped interactions. Choosing correctly affects storage, segmentation and analytics.
Why would data be in a dataset but not in the profile?
The schema or dataset may not be enabled for Profile, the record may lack a valid primary identity, or ingestion may have partially failed.
What does a merge policy do?
It decides how fragments are combined and which value wins when attributes conflict, using timestamp order or dataset precedence.
Scenario questions for architects and consultants
Profiles are merging different customers together. How do you investigate?
Inspect the identity graph for shared identifiers (shared phone numbers, placeholder emails, shared devices), review which namespaces are allowed to link, clean source data and adjust the identity strategy, then validate in a development sandbox.
A streaming audience is not triggering a journey. Where do you look?
Trace the path: event schema and datastream, dataset ingestion, profile update, streaming eligibility of the rule, the journey's audience or event configuration, and consent.
How would you design an AEP implementation for a bank?
Start from prioritised use cases, define a strict identity strategy around the customer ID, apply governance labels to sensitive attributes, separate sandboxes, and phase sources and channels.
Developer questions
How does Web SDK send data to AEP?
Web SDK sends events to the Edge Network; a datastream routes them to AEP datasets and other Adobe services.
How would you validate an ingestion pipeline?
Validate sample payloads against the schema, check batch errors, reconcile counts with the source and inspect resulting profiles.
How to prepare
Practise explaining one end-to-end project out loud, from use case to activation. Our career accelerator includes mock architecture scenarios, and the AEP career path explains which roles ask which questions.
Frequently asked questions
Which AEP topics come up most in interviews?
Identity resolution, profile and merge policies, segmentation methods, ingestion troubleshooting and how AEP supports RTCDP, AJO and CJA.
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