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Building a Scalable Real-time Notification System

Imagine a social media platform where users can follow each other and receive real-time notifications about new posts, comments, and messages.

Requirements

1. Microservices Architecture:
   • Design the system as a collection of independent microservices that communicate via APIs.
     • User Service: Manages user accounts and profiles.
     • Post Service: Handles creation, storage, and retrieval of posts.
     • Notification Service: Generates and delivers real-time notifications to users.
   • Utilize message brokers like Kafka or RabbitMQ for asynchronous communication between services.
2. Real-time Notifications:
   • Implement a mechanism for pushing notifications to users in real-time. Consider web sockets, server-sent events (SSE), or message queues for this purpose.
   • Ensure efficient delivery and minimize server load when pushing notifications to a large number of users.
3. Scalability:
   • Design the system to handle a growing number of users and concurrent requests. Consider using technologies like containerization (Docker) and orchestration (Kubernetes) for easier deployment and scaling.
   • Implement caching mechanisms to improve performance and reduce database load.
4. Persistence:
   • Choose a suitable database (e.g., relational or NoSQL) for storing user information, posts, and notification history.
   • Consider data partitioning and sharding strategies for horizontal scaling of the database.
5. Monitoring and Observability:
   • Integrate monitoring tools to track system health, performance metrics, and identify potential bottlenecks.

Extra points

• Implement user preferences for notification types and delivery channels (email, push notifications).
• Integrate with a user presence system to optimize notification delivery (only send notifications to active users).
• Implement security measures to prevent unauthorized access and malicious activity.

Deliverables

• Detailed system design document outlining the chosen microservices architecture, communication protocols, and data storage strategies.
• Code demonstrating core functionalities (proof of concept) in your chosen language (Go or Python).

This challenge allows the developer to showcase their skills in

• Microservice design principles
• Building APIs and inter-service communication
• Real-time communication technologies
• Scalability and performance optimization
• Database management
• Monitoring and observability