ORIGINAL COMPANY-CONTEXT PRACTICE
Handle gaps in synthetic grid telemetry
Original practice scenario: A power-network simulator streams measurements from many devices. Some links disconnect and later replay buffered readings. Design the monitoring ingestion path.
Written for independent practice using company context; this is not a verified question from a company interview.
A REASONED APPROACH
Model answer.
Distinguish transport availability from the physical condition being measured. A missing measurement is an unknown state, not a safe zero or evidence that equipment stopped.
Work through it
- Identify device sessions and sequence numbers, deduplicate replay and preserve event and ingestion timestamps with quality indicators.
- Compute provisional windows with freshness thresholds and late-event correction rules; separate connectivity alerts from measured-condition alerts.
- Test burst replay, clock errors, long gaps and invalid units while bounding queues and prioritizing critical synthetic signals under overload.
Tradeoffs to discuss
- Longer lateness windows improve historical completeness but delay stable aggregates; real-time views need visible provisional status.
Common pitfalls
- Do not interpolate through every gap without a validated assumption.
- Keep this monitoring design separate from real grid control or protection logic.