System designHardsd-p114

Subject Queues streamingLevel Senior~45 minCommon in Distributed systems interviewsIndustries Technology

Question

Design a change-data-capture (CDC) pipeline that streams every change from a primary database to downstream consumers (search index, cache, analytics) in near real time.

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.