Explain sharding and trade-offs.
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hardSystem Design
What is database sharding?
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shardingpartitioning
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What Is Database Sharding?
Target Audience: Junior & Senior Software Engineers preparing for System Design Interviews — no prior system design knowledge assumed. Difficulty: Medium
How to read this doc: Every concept is explained in plain language first. Right after, you'll see a callout like `📌 Inte
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Routing a key to a shard
Run Playgroundimport hashlib
SHARDS = ["db-0", "db-1", "db-2", "db-3"]
def shard_for(key):
h = int(hashlib.md5(key.encode()).hexdigest(), 16)
return SHARDS[h % len(SHARDS)]
for k in ["user:1001", "user:1002", "order:77", "order:78"]:
print(k, "->", shard_for(k))
# NOTE: plain modulo means adding a shard remaps most keys.
# Use consistent hashing to limit how much data moves on resize.05
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