You're reading from System Design Guide for Software Professionals Build scalable solutions – from fundamental concepts to cracking top tech company interviews

Product type Paperback

Published in Aug 2024

Publisher Packt

ISBN-13 9781805124993

Length 384 pages

Edition 1st Edition

Concepts

Application Development

Authors (2):

Dhirendra Sinha

Tejas Chopra

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Table of Contents (21) Chapters

Preface

1. Part 1: Foundations of System Design

2. Chapter 1: Basics of System Design FREE CHAPTER

3. Chapter 2: Distributed System Attributes

4. Chapter 3: Distributed Systems Theorems and Data Structures

5. Part 2: Core Components of Distributed Systems

6. Chapter 4: Distributed Systems Building Blocks: DNS, Load Balancers, and Application Gateways

7. Chapter 5: Design and Implementation of System Components –Databases and Storage

8. Chapter 6: Distributed Cache

9. Chapter 7: Pub/Sub and Distributed Queues

10. Part 3: System Design in Practice

11. Chapter 8: Design and Implementation of System Components: API, Security, and Metrics

12. Chapter 9: System Design – URL Shortener

13. Chapter 10: System Design – Proximity Service

14. Chapter 11: Designing a Service Like Twitter

15. Chapter 12: Designing a Service Like Instagram

16. Chapter 13: Designing a Service Like Google Docs

17. Chapter 14: Designing a Service Like Netflix

18. Chapter 15: Tips for Interviewees

19. Chapter 16: System Design Cheat Sheet

20. Index

Application gateways

While load balancers provide basic traffic distribution services, application gateways offer more advanced intermediary proxy functionality tailored for modern cloud-based environments.

An application gateway sits between clients and backend services, intercepting traffic to provide routing, security, acceleration, analytics, and adaptability capabilities. Application gateways are especially beneficial for architectures based on microservices, where numerous independent services must be aggregated into unified APIs.

We will cover the key features and benefits of application gateways, their importance for microservices, real-world implementation options, and critical design considerations when integrating them into cloud architectures. Figure 4.8 shows a typical API gateway, which is the first point of contact for incoming API traffic and covers different aspects of security, AuthN, AuthZ, caching, and even load balancing.