Compute top-N posts in a workspace

Q: Compute top-N posts in a workspace

This question evaluates skills in designing scalable, low-latency analytics and aggregation systems, covering event tracking, time-windowed ranking, stream processing, storage trade-offs (OLTP vs OLAP), caching, API design, and handling late or duplicate events.

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Question

Design a feature that returns the top-N posts (e.g., Confluence pages/blog posts) in a workspace.

Requirements:

Define what “top” means (e.g., views, likes, comments, or a weighted score).
Support queries like: top N posts for the last 24 hours / 7 days / 30 days.
Low latency for reads.
Handle high write volume of events (views/likes).

Deliverables:

Event tracking and aggregation design.
Storage choices (OLTP vs OLAP) and schema.
API design and caching.
Handling late/duplicate events and backfills.

Compute top-N posts in a workspace

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