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Design Broadcast Scheduling APIs
Design a broadcast messaging service tailored for companies.
Core Requirements
- Each company maintains its own set of subscribers.
- Clients must be able to schedule a message to be broadcast to all subscribers of a specific company at a designated future time.
- The system needs to support querying scheduled broadcasts within a given time range.
- The system must guarantee eventual delivery of the message to every intended subscriber.
Areas to Describe
- External APIs: Detail the API endpoints for managing subscribers (e.g., adding, removing) and for scheduling new broadcasts.
- Storage Schema: Propose a database schema for storing information about companies, their subscribers, scheduled broadcasts, and the delivery state of messages.
- Scheduler Logic: Explain how the system's scheduler identifies which broadcasts are due for delivery.
- Polling Model & Scalability: Discuss whether a simple polling mechanism is acceptable for the scheduler and, if so, how it would be improved to handle larger scales.
- Robustness & Reliability: Address how the system handles idempotency, retries for failed deliveries, prevention of duplicate messages, and general system failures.
- Recipient List Evaluation: Consider a critical product decision: should the list of recipients for a broadcast be determined (snapshotted) at the time the broadcast is scheduled, or dynamically evaluated at the time of sending? Justify your choice.
AI interview prep
Core dilemma
Balancing the timely and efficient execution of a large volume of scheduled broadcasts with robust fault tolerance and eventual consistency for message delivery to dynamic subscriber lists.
Mid-level signals3
Senior signals3
Red flags3
3 tradeoffs and 3 stress tests locked
Interview prep
Unlock the interviewer X-Ray rubric, tradeoff matrix, stress tests, clarifying questions, and key concepts.
Design Broadcast Scheduling APIs
Design a broadcast messaging service tailored for companies.
Core Requirements
- Each company maintains its own set of subscribers.
- Clients must be able to schedule a message to be broadcast to all subscribers of a specific company at a designated future time.
- The system needs to support querying scheduled broadcasts within a given time range.
- The system must guarantee eventual delivery of the message to every intended subscriber.
Areas to Describe
- External APIs: Detail the API endpoints for managing subscribers (e.g., adding, removing) and for scheduling new broadcasts.
- Storage Schema: Propose a database schema for storing information about companies, their subscribers, scheduled broadcasts, and the delivery state of messages.
- Scheduler Logic: Explain how the system's scheduler identifies which broadcasts are due for delivery.
- Polling Model & Scalability: Discuss whether a simple polling mechanism is acceptable for the scheduler and, if so, how it would be improved to handle larger scales.
- Robustness & Reliability: Address how the system handles idempotency, retries for failed deliveries, prevention of duplicate messages, and general system failures.
- Recipient List Evaluation: Consider a critical product decision: should the list of recipients for a broadcast be determined (snapshotted) at the time the broadcast is scheduled, or dynamically evaluated at the time of sending? Justify your choice.