Foundations of System Design

A Comprehensive Guide for Building Scalable and Resilient Web Applications

Preface

Welcome to Foundations of System Design: A Comprehensive Guide for Building Scalable and Resilient Web Applications.

This book is a comprehensive resource for software engineers, architects, and technical leaders who want to master the art and science of designing scalable, resilient, and maintainable web applications. Whether you’re preparing for system design interviews or building production systems, this guide provides the foundational knowledge and practical insights you need to succeed.

What You’ll Learn

This book covers the essential concepts, components, and patterns used in modern distributed systems:

• Core Principles: Understanding distributed systems, scalability, reliability, and the fundamental design principles
• Architectural Patterns: From monolithic to microservices, and everything in between
• Essential Components: Load balancers, caches, databases, message queues, and CDNs
• Design Best Practices: SOLID principles applied to system design
• Real-World Applications: Practical examples and implementation strategies

Who This Book Is For

• Software engineers preparing for system design interviews
• Backend developers looking to deepen their understanding of distributed systems
• Technical leads and architects designing large-scale applications
• Students and professionals transitioning into system design roles

How to Use This Book

Each chapter builds upon previous concepts, but they can also be read independently based on your interests and needs. Code examples, diagrams, and real-world scenarios are included throughout to reinforce learning.

The book is structured to take you from foundational concepts to advanced architectural patterns, with hands-on examples and practical considerations at every step.

About the Author

Pawan Rama Mali is a technology professional with extensive experience in designing and building scalable distributed systems. This book represents a collection of practical knowledge and best practices gathered from building and scaling web applications in production environments.

ORCID: 0000-0001-7864-5819

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Acknowledgments

This book draws upon foundational research, industry best practices, and seminal works in distributed systems and software architecture. Key references include:

• Designing Data-Intensive Applications by Martin Kleppmann (Kleppmann 2017) - A comprehensive guide to the big ideas behind reliable, scalable, and maintainable systems
• System Design Interview by Alex Xu (Xu 2020, 2022) - Practical insights for system design interviews
• Building Microservices by Sam Newman (Newman 2021) - Essential patterns for microservices architecture
• Clean Architecture by Robert C. Martin (Martin 2017) - Software design principles and patterns
• Foundational papers on distributed systems including the CAP theorem (Gilbert and Lynch 2002; Brewer 2012), consistent hashing (Karger et al. 1997), and key distributed systems (DeCandia et al. 2007; Chang et al. 2008; Lakshman and Malik 2010)

Complete references are provided at the end of each chapter and in the bibliography.

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Let’s begin our journey into the foundations of system design!

“Good design adds value faster than it adds cost.” — Thomas C. Gale

Brewer, Eric. 2012. “CAP Twelve Years Later: How the "Rules" Have Changed.” Computer 45 (2): 23–29. https://doi.org/10.1109/MC.2012.37.

Chang, Fay, Jeffrey Dean, Sanjay Ghemawat, Wilson C. Hsieh, Deborah A. Wallach, Mike Burrows, Tushar Chandra, Andrew Fikes, and Robert E. Gruber. 2008. “Bigtable: A Distributed Storage System for Structured Data.” ACM Transactions on Computer Systems 26 (2): 1–26. https://doi.org/10.1145/1365815.1365816.

DeCandia, Giuseppe, Deniz Hastorun, Madan Jampani, Gunavardhan Kakulapati, Avinash Lakshman, Alex Pilchin, Swaminathan Sivasubramanian, Peter Vosshall, and Werner Vogels. 2007. “Dynamo: Amazon’s Highly Available Key-Value Store.” ACM SIGOPS Operating Systems Review 41 (6): 205–20. https://doi.org/10.1145/1323293.1294281.

Gilbert, Seth, and Nancy Lynch. 2002. “Brewer’s Conjecture and the Feasibility of Consistent, Available, Partition-Tolerant Web Services.” ACM SIGACT News 33 (2): 51–59. https://doi.org/10.1145/564585.564601.

Karger, David, Eric Lehman, Tom Leighton, Rina Panigrahy, Matthew Levine, and Daniel Lewin. 1997. “Consistent Hashing and Random Trees: Distributed Caching Protocols for Relieving Hot Spots on the World Wide Web.” In Proceedings of the Twenty-Ninth Annual ACM Symposium on Theory of Computing, 654–63. ACM. https://doi.org/10.1145/258533.258660.

Kleppmann, Martin. 2017. Designing Data-Intensive Applications: The Big Ideas Behind Reliable, Scalable, and Maintainable Systems. O’Reilly Media. https://dataintensive.net/.

Lakshman, Avinash, and Prashant Malik. 2010. “Cassandra: A Decentralized Structured Storage System.” ACM SIGOPS Operating Systems Review 44 (2): 35–40. https://doi.org/10.1145/1773912.1773922.

Martin, Robert C. 2017. Clean Architecture: A Craftsman’s Guide to Software Structure and Design. Robert c. Martin Series. Prentice Hall.

Newman, Sam. 2021. Building Microservices: Designing Fine-Grained Systems. 2nd ed. O’Reilly Media.

Xu, Alex. 2020. System Design Interview: An Insider’s Guide. 1st ed. ByteByteGo.

———. 2022. System Design Interview: An Insider’s Guide, Volume 2. 2nd ed. ByteByteGo.