Code Room
System designHardsd-p056
Subject Data modelingLevel Senior–Staff~45 minCommon in Databases & SQL interviewsIndustries Technology

Question

Design the storage and query layer for a social graph (friends/follows) that answers 'friends of friends' and mutual-connection queries for hundreds of millions of users.

What a strong answer looks like

Clarify scale and constraints first. Propose a clean component breakdown, then go deep on the hard parts — data model, bottlenecks, consistency, failure modes — and name the trade-offs you are making.

Narrate your design
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Run or narrate your approach, then ask the coach.