Category System Design

Introduction Representational State Transfer (REST) APIs have become a cornerstone of modern software architecture, facilitating seamless communication between clients and servers in distributed systems. As of 05:39 PM IST on Friday, October 10, 2025, REST remains a dominant paradigm for…

Concept Explanation REST (Representational State Transfer) and GraphQL are two prominent paradigms for designing APIs, enabling communication between clients (e.g., web or mobile applications) and servers in distributed systems. Both are widely adopted in modern architectures, powering applications at companies like Twitter (REST)…

Concept Explanation A webhook is an event-driven mechanism that enables asynchronous communication between systems by allowing one application to send real-time data to another application via HTTP callbacks when specific events occur. Webhooks have become a fundamental component in modern distributed systems,…

Concept Explanation Real-time communication is a cornerstone of modern web and mobile applications, enabling instantaneous data exchange between clients and servers for functionalities such as live chats, stock tickers, real-time notifications, and collaborative tools. Technologies like WebSockets, Long Polling, and Server-Sent Events (SSE) are…

Concept Explanation Service discovery is a critical mechanism in microservices architectures, enabling individual services to dynamically locate and communicate with one another in a distributed, scalable environment. Microservices have become a dominant architectural pattern for building large-scale applications, such as…

Concept Explanation An API Gateway is a specialized server that acts as a centralized entry point for managing, routing, and processing API requests in distributed systems, particularly in microservices architectures. API gateways have become indispensable for modern applications, enabling seamless interaction between…

Concept Explanation Load balancers, reverse proxies, and API gateways are critical components in modern system design, each serving distinct yet overlapping roles in managing network traffic, enhancing performance, and ensuring security and scalability. These technologies are fundamental to distributed architectures,…

Concept Explanation A Content Delivery Network (CDN) is a geographically distributed network of servers designed to enhance the delivery speed, reliability, and scalability of digital content, including web pages, images, videos, and applications, to end-users across the globe. CDNs have…

Concept Explanation The Domain Name System (DNS) is a hierarchical, distributed naming system that serves as a critical infrastructure component of the internet, facilitating the translation of human-readable domain names (e.g., www.example.com) into machine-readable Internet Protocol (IP) addresses (e.g., 192.0.2.1).…