https://danpodina.com/designs/Recent content in System Design: Decisions and Tradeoffs on Dan PodinaHugoen-usThu, 10 Sep 2026 00:00:00 +0000https://danpodina.com/designs/modular-monolith-vs-microservices/Thu, 10 Sep 2026 00:00:00 +0000https://danpodina.com/designs/modular-monolith-vs-microservices/<p><em>This is a worked architecture example with invented product constraints, not a description of a client system.</em></p> <p>A service boundary buys independent deployment and operation. It also introduces a network call, another failure mode, and a new place where data can arrive late. The question is whether a specific boundary is worth those costs now.</p> <p>Imagine a SaaS team of five engineers. Its product has accounts, a customer catalog, orders, reporting, and email notifications. Traffic is modest. Reports occasionally consume enough CPU to slow the API. The team is considering turning each noun into a service.</p>https://danpodina.com/designs/url-shortener/Thu, 10 Sep 2026 00:00:00 +0000https://danpodina.com/designs/url-shortener/<p><em>This is a hypothetical design exercise, revised from a practice session. The numbers below are assumptions for reasoning about the design, not results from a deployed customer system.</em></p> <p>A short link has a simple job: resolve a slug and redirect the browser. But if the customer is watching a campaign dashboard during an SMS send, the product is also an analytics system. That second requirement changes what it is safe to cache, what must survive a crash, and how we measure success.</p>