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System Design Interview: Relational Database for a Dating App Pun
Databases Post #7324 · source on Telegram

System Design Interview: Relational Database for a Dating App Pun

Description

A tweet from Ahad (@a_hahahahad, verified) showing a classic setup-punchline meme. The text reads '*in a system design interview* > what type of database would you use while designing a dating app (don't say it) (don't say it) (don't say it) . me: Relational Database'. Below is a two-panel image of Jim Halpert from The Office, first looking down trying to contain himself, then looking up with a knowing smirk. The joke is the double meaning of 'relational' -- technically a relational database (SQL) and 'relational' as in human relationships for a dating app

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Databases Interviews DesignPatterns Architecture

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RelationalDatabaseDesign SystemDesignInterview Database Interview Sql TechnicalPuns Wordplay DeveloperHumor PopCultureReference TechnicalInterviews

Comments

25
Anonymous ★ Top Pick The real senior move is recommending a graph database -- because relationships are complicated, many-to-many, and eventually everyone ends up connected to everyone else through at most six degrees of swiping
  1. Anonymous ★ Top Pick

    The real senior move is recommending a graph database -- because relationships are complicated, many-to-many, and eventually everyone ends up connected to everyone else through at most six degrees of swiping

  2. Anonymous

    Any senior dev knows the right answer is a graph database to model complex user connections, but also knows the 'relational database' pun will get a bigger laugh from the hiring committee

  3. Anonymous

    Nothing like a 100-table JOIN to prove you really believe in long-term relationships

  4. Anonymous

    The real question is whether you'd use optimistic or pessimistic locking for those relationship status updates

  5. Anonymous

    When the interviewer asks about databases for a dating app and you know they want to hear 'graph database' or 'distributed NoSQL,' but your 20 years of experience screams that a properly indexed PostgreSQL instance would handle millions of swipes before you'd even need to think about sharding

  6. Anonymous

    Go ahead, say relational - nothing says love at scale like an N-to-N join and a global write hotspot on likes. In prod you still bolt on a graph and a cache

  7. Anonymous

    They crave Neo4j for relationship graphs, but relational nails it: foreign keys enforce commitments better than NoSQL flings

  8. @aytomik 10mo

    Sakura of course

  9. @vladyslav_google 10mo

    I mean, is there something wrong with using relational DB for dating apps ?

    1. @Daonifur 10mo

      The only database I trust is base 8

    2. @chupasaurus 10mo

      Nothing, the only problem is access lists.

      1. @vladyslav_google 10mo

        What this about ?

        1. @chupasaurus 10mo

          Storing and checking for relations (same pun) between users for showing/hiding parts of the profile is PITA in RDBMS.

    3. @mrYakov 10mo

      well, it kinda useless, because main thing is matching people, so you need vector database for it. of course you can use relational db and build custom vector index on top, but why ?

      1. @chupasaurus 10mo

        It's all fun and giggles until the curse of dimensionality kicks in.

        1. @mrYakov 10mo

          Still better than scan full table and find matching keywords, lol

          1. @chupasaurus 10mo

            Indices are forbidden?

            1. @mrYakov 10mo

              Just google google history and why they moved from matching keywords approach.

              1. @chupasaurus 10mo

                just google google dating app

      2. @vladyslav_google 10mo

        I agree with you on that. But for managing user - post, user-chats, user-comments, other stuff non-related to the user-to-user connections with strong consistency guarantees, the relational DB is a go-to choice obviously. Could easily be combined with vector DB, though.

        1. @chupasaurus 10mo

          Exactly. IIRC Badoo used 5 different DBMSs with relational one as the root source for others.

  10. @Broken_Cloud_1 10mo

    ☃️☃️☃️

  11. @maks_mikh 10mo

    It is technically correct. The best way to be correct

  12. @theodolu 10mo

    Out of my mind lmao

  13. @theodolu 10mo

    https://youtu.be/daZCDGYKi74

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