System designMediumsd-p128

Subject Data modelingLevel Mid–Senior~45 minCommon in Databases & SQL interviewsIndustries Technology, Software development

Question

Design a faceted search/filtering system for a catalog (e-commerce products) where users filter by many attributes (category, brand, price, color) and see the counts for each remaining option.

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.