While data is integral for business insights, the growing volume of data used on a day-to-day basis has become increasingly difficult for companies to manage.

Choosing the right data storage and retrieval strategy makes a huge difference. If done well, database system design can significantly increase the efficiency and accuracy of a database, decreasing storage costs and the frequency of system crashes.

This is where data engineers and data architects come in. By creating the architecture to streamline data querying, they are ultimately responsible for how databases store and manage data.

Even if you’re not a database engineer, having a basic understanding of this topic will help you make efficient decisions when working with large databases.

This course provides a framework to ace database system design interview questions, by teaching you how to:

• Prioritize data management needs.
• Define functional and non-functional requirements.
• Justify design decisions and consider trade-offs of different database management systems.
• Manage common edge cases across large-scale data systems.
• Respond to case studies & interview questions covering database system design.

To follow along with the provided material, we recommend having at least a basic understanding of SQL, database functions, data flow visualization, and SQL schema design.

Our SQL learning path covers some of these topics in more detail, but you can also find additional resources elsewhere, such as in Fundamentals of Data Engineering.

While we cover all of the fundamentals within the course, it’s worth noting that answering database system design questions involves more than just learning theory.

Tackling these questions is a skill harnessed through practice, and taking a naive approach, while frustrating at times, is great for learning. Even if the solution that first comes to mind is too simple, incrementally working on better solutions will help these steps come more naturally.