Design a fast host listing metrics page

Q: Design a fast host listing metrics page

This question evaluates backend system design and data engineering competencies, including scalable API design, time-range aggregation correctness (handling partial overlaps and state changes), data modeling and indexing, caching and precomputation, and performance validation.

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Question

Design the backend for a host (landlord) listings page.

User flow:

Host opens a page showing many of their listings .
Host selects a date range .
For each listing shown, the UI displays aggregated metrics for that range, e.g.:
- Nights booked (how many nights are reserved within the range)
- Average price within the range

Assume you start with these tables:

Listings(listing_id, host_id, ... )
Reservations(reservation_id, listing_id, start_date, end_date, status, ... )
Pricing(listing_id, date, price, currency, ... )

Problem:

When a host has 100+ listings , the page becomes slow.

Task:

Propose an end-to-end design (APIs, data access patterns, storage/indexing, caching/precomputation) to make the page fast and scalable.
Specify how you would compute the metrics correctly (including edge cases like partial overlap, cancellations) and keep them up to date.
Include performance goals and how you would validate them.

Design a fast host listing metrics page

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Solution

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