Initial Design of Quora
Discover how to structure the initial System Design of a complex Q&A platform like Quora. Define the high-level architecture by selecting appropriate data stores and specialized caching systems. Learn to map core workflows and design the necessary APIs for posting and searching.
Initial design
The initial design of Quora consists of the following components:
Web and application servers: Web servers accept incoming HTTP requests and forward them to application servers for processing. They run manager processes that delegate work to worker processes on application servers through a routing layer. This routing layer manages task queues, where managers enqueue tasks and workers dequeue them for execution. Application servers may also maintain in-memory priority queues to differentiate request classes. The following diagram shows an abstract view of this architecture:
Data stores: Quora uses specific storage solutions based on data requirements:
Relational database (MySQL): Stores critical data requiring high consistency, such as questions, answers, comments, and votes.
NoSQL (HBase): Stores high-throughput data like view counts, ranking scores, and extracted features for recommendations. HBase supports the high-bandwidth requirements of big data processing and avoids the expensive recomputation of features. ...