Data Model Design and Access Patterns Questions
Discuss how you'd design data models based on access patterns. Understand relational vs. NoSQL trade-offs. Know when to denormalize, how to handle distributed transactions, and strategies for scaling databases (sharding, partitioning). Discuss read vs. write optimization.
EasyTechnical
0 practiced
Discuss pros and cons of natural keys versus surrogate keys in schema design. Given a join-heavy domain where joins by customer_id and email are frequent, which key strategy would you choose and why? Consider FK constraints, human-readability, sharding, and migration complexity.
MediumSystem Design
0 practiced
You must architect multi-region replication for a database to ensure low read latency globally and disaster recovery. Discuss the trade-offs between active-active and active-passive replication, approaches to conflict resolution, replication lag handling, and how partitioning and data model choices influence cross-region latency and consistency.
HardSystem Design
0 practiced
Design a social feed system that supports personalized timelines for 200M users. Some celebrities have 50M followers. Compare fan-out-on-write vs fan-out-on-read strategies. For each approach, detail the data models, storage implications, update patterns, and how you would handle very high-fanout users without overwhelming storage or write capacity.
MediumSystem Design
0 practiced
Design the data model and storage strategy for a messaging service that must handle 100k messages/sec with 30-day retention. Requirements: efficient retrieval by conversation_id (paginated), by user (recent N messages), and an accurate unread count per user. Compare a normalized relational approach to a NoSQL document/wide-column approach and justify denormalization, indexing, compaction, and TTL choices.
HardTechnical
0 practiced
Design a data model and tenancy strategy for a multi-tenant healthcare application storing PHI. Requirements: strict tenant isolation, encryption at rest and in transit, tenant-level backups and restores, per-tenant retention policies, and least-privilege access controls. Compare shared-schema, separate-schema, and separate-database approaches and explain compliance implications (e.g., HIPAA).
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