Scalability of a flight ticket booking system:
How will you ensure that the system can handle a large number of concurrent users and transactions on a online flight ticket booking system, especially during peak booking times? What strategies and technologies would you use to scale the system horizontally and vertically?
Performance Optimization:
What are the key areas of the system that need performance optimization, and how would you approach optimizing them? How would you measure and monitor the system’s performance to identify bottlenecks and areas for improvement?
Concurrency and Transactions:
How will you manage concurrent access to critical resources such as seat availability and booking inventory? What strategies would you use to ensure data consistency and avoid conflicts in a distributed environment?
Security of Flight Ticket Booking System:
When designing a flight ticket booking system, it’s crucial to address security considerations. Firstly, focus on user authentication to ensure that only authorized individuals can access the system. Secondly, implement robust authorization protocols to define and manage user permissions effectively. Moreover, consider employing data encryption techniques to safeguard sensitive information during transmission and storage. In addition, regularly update security measures to adapt to evolving threats. Furthermore, emphasize a comprehensive approach to security, covering not only authentication and authorization but also anticipating potential vulnerabilities. Consequently, a proactive strategy will help fortify the system against security breaches.
Fault Tolerance of flight ticket booking system and Resilience:
How will you design the system to be fault-tolerant and resilient to failures? What mechanisms would you put in place to handle errors, recover from failures, and maintain system availability?
Integration with External Systems:
How would you integrate the booking system with external services such as payment gateways and flight availability APIs? What challenges might arise from these integrations, and how would you address them?
Data Modeling and Database Design:
What considerations would you take into account? When designing the database schema for storing flight information, user data, and bookings? How would you ensure efficient data retrieval and minimize data redundancy?
API Design and Documentation:
How would you design the RESTful APIs for the booking system, and what best practices would you follow? How would you document the APIs to make them easy to understand and use for frontend developers and third-party integrators?
Testing and Quality Assurance:
What testing strategies would you employ to ensure the reliability and correctness of the system? How would you automate testing and ensure adequate test coverage for critical components?
Compliance and Regulations:
What regulatory requirements or industry standards (e.g., PCI DSS for payment processing) would the system need to comply with? How would you ensure that the system meets these requirements?
These questions delve into various aspects of designing a complex and robust flight ticket booking system, requiring a deep understanding of software architecture, distributed systems, performance optimization, security best practices, and integration with external services.