System designHardsd-p058

Subject ConsistencyLevel Senior–Staff~45 minCommon in Databases & SQL interviewsIndustries Technology

Question

You need an operation to update data across several services atomically (reserve inventory + charge payment + create order). How do you design for consistency across services?

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.

Learn the concepts

Narrate your design

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Run or narrate your approach, then ask the coach.