If you want to pass system design interviews (without getting lucky), learn these 15 heuristics:
1. Latency + Global โ CDN
โณ Deliver data from edge servers to reduce latency
2. Read + Bottleneck โ Cache
โณ Store frequent reads in cache to reduce database load
3. Write + Spike โ Queue
โณ Buffer writes for asynchronous processing during traffic spikes
4. Distributed + Transaction โ Saga
โณ Handle multi-service transactions with compensating steps
5. ACID + Relational โ SQL
โณ Use a SQL database for strong consistency and transactional integrity
6. Flexible + Scale โ NoSQL
โณ Use NoSQL for schema flexibility and horizontal scalability
7. SQL + Scale โ Shard DB
โณ Federate and partition data across shards to scale effectively
8. Load + Growth โ Scale Out
โณ Add servers to handle extra traffic
9. Traffic + Reliability โ Load Balance
โณ Distribute requests evenly for performance
10. Core + Failure โ Redundancy
โณ Replicate core services to avoid single points of failure
11. Durability + Faults โ Replication
โณ Replicate data for availability and recovery
12. Requests + Spike โ Throttle
โณ Limit excessive requests to prevent server overload
13. Load + Spike โ Autoscale
โณ Add or remove server capacity automatically to handle changing load
14. Realtime + Updates โ WebSockets
โณ Use WebSockets for live, bidirectional communication
15. Retry + Safety โ Idempotent
โณ Make operations safe to retry without side effects using idempotency
(What else should make this list?)
Remember, these are just heuristics.
The right solution depends on the requirements.
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