This question evaluates expertise in designing scalable, low-latency real-time systems—covering streaming ingestion via WebSocket, geospatial partitioning into deterministic cells, time-windowed density aggregation and top‑K querying—alongside conceptual knowledge of distributed consensus algorithms (Paxos vs Raft) within the System Design / Distributed Systems domain. It is commonly asked because it probes architectural trade-offs for high-throughput, low-latency geospatial streaming and fault-tolerant replication, combining practical application (component design, data partitioning, real-time aggregation and query serving) with conceptual understanding of consensus protocol differences.
You are designing a real-time heat map for a ride-hailing platform. Driver apps continuously send location updates. Rider apps (and internal tools) need to visualize where drivers cluster and fetch the top-K busiest cells within a map region/zoom, with low latency.
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