High-Throughput API Design
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Interviewer [00:00:05]: Design a high-throughput payment processing API that can handle 10,000 transactions per second with sub-100ms latency and 99.999% availability.
You [00:00:15]: I'd like to start by understanding the requirements better. What types of payment methods need to be supported? What are the key operations? Are there any specific compliance requirements? And what are the consistency and durability guarantees needed?
Interviewer [00:00:28]: Good questions. We need to support credit cards, ACH, and digital wallets. Key operations include payment authorization, capture, refund, and status checks. We must be PCI-DSS compliant. Transactions must be durable once acknowledged, and we need strong consistency for individual transactions but can tolerate eventual consistency for reporting.
AI Suggestion:
- API Architecture:
- Propose a layered architecture: API Gateway Service Layer Processing Layer Storage Layer
- Suggest RESTful API design with resource-oriented endpoints
- Recommend asynchronous processing with synchronous acknowledgment
- Discuss idempotency key pattern for safe retries
- Scalability Approach:
- Explain horizontal scaling with stateless services
- Suggest sharding strategy based on merchant ID or transaction type
- Discuss caching strategies for reference data and authorization responses
- Recommend rate limiting and throttling mechanisms
- Performance Optimization:
- Suggest connection pooling for database and external service connections
- Discuss optimized database schema with appropriate indices
- Recommend read replicas for reporting and status checks
- Mention batch processing for non-critical operations
- Reliability & Fault Tolerance:
- Explain circuit breakers for external service calls
- Discuss retry strategies with exponential backoff
- Suggest multi-region deployment with active-active configuration
- Recommend dead letter queues for failed transactions
- Security & Compliance:
- Discuss PCI-DSS compliance requirements (tokenization, encryption)
- Suggest API authentication and authorization mechanisms
- Recommend data encryption at rest and in transit
- Mention audit logging for all transactions
- Monitoring & Observability:
- Suggest key metrics to track (latency, error rates, throughput)
- Discuss distributed tracing for request flows
- Recommend alerting strategies for SLA violations
🏗️ API Architecture Design
Get expert guidance on designing scalable API architectures, including RESTful vs. GraphQL approaches, resource modeling, versioning strategies, and patterns for high-throughput systems.
⚡ Performance Optimization
Receive instant recommendations on optimizing API performance, including caching strategies, database optimization, connection pooling, and techniques for reducing latency in high-volume systems.
🔄 Scalability Patterns
Access real-time guidance on implementing scalability patterns for APIs, including horizontal scaling, sharding strategies, load balancing approaches, and techniques for handling traffic spikes.
🔍 Reliability & Fault Tolerance
Get instant suggestions for building reliable APIs with circuit breakers, retry mechanisms, timeout strategies, and approaches for graceful degradation during partial system failures.
🔒 Security & Compliance
Receive guidance on implementing secure APIs with authentication, authorization, rate limiting, input validation, and compliance with industry standards and regulations.
📈 Monitoring & Observability
Access expert advice on designing observable APIs with logging, metrics, tracing, and alerting strategies that provide insights into system health and performance.
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