🗄️ Technology Focus
Browse SWE patterns by database technology and paradigm
Available Technology Focus Tags
Missing Indexes on Frequently Queried Columns
Failing to create indexes on columns used in WHERE clauses, JOIN conditions, or ORDER BY statements, causing full table scans that degrade exponential...
Insufficient Integer Size for Growth
Using 32-bit integers for auto-incrementing primary keys or counters that will exceed 2.14 billion, causing complete write failures when the limit is ...
Lack of Foreign Keys / Constraints
Not enforcing relational integrity at the schema level through foreign key constraints, unique constraints, or CHECK constraints. The database becomes...
Over-Normalized Schema with Excessive Joins
Taking database normalization to an extreme where data is split into too many tables, requiring numerous joins for basic operations. While normalizati...
Under-Normalization (God Tables)
Creating "God tables" with dozens or hundreds of columns that mix multiple entity types or business concepts. Includes anti-patterns like repeated col...
Cache-Unfriendly Schema Design
Schema designs that prevent effective caching strategies, causing database overload under normal operating conditions. This includes mixing frequently...
Non-Atomic Schema Migrations
Deploying schema changes and application code simultaneously without backward compatibility, creating windows where the system is in an inconsistent s...
Replication-Unsafe Schema Design
Schema designs that don't account for distributed database replication challenges, leading to split-brain scenarios, replication lag issues, or confli...
Unbounded Social Graph Queries
Implementing social relationships using pure relational joins without considering the exponential growth of multi-hop queries. Simple adjacency list t...
JSON Blob Misuse in Relational Database
Storing significant structured data as JSON blobs inside relational database tables instead of using proper columns and relationships. While modern da...
Insufficient Permission Granularity in Schema
Schema designs that lack proper permission granularity, allowing broad access to data through single permission grants. This includes friend-of-friend...
Security Audit Trail Schema Weakness
Schemas that lack proper audit trail tables or security event logging structures, making it impossible to detect breaches, investigate incidents, or m...
Insufficient Security Isolation in Schema
Schema designs that fail to isolate high-value or sensitive data from less critical data, creating single points of failure where compromise of one co...
Poor Data Partitioning and Hotspot Keys
Designing schemas without considering data distribution, either keeping everything monolithic or choosing partition keys that create severe hotspots. ...
Unbounded Growth (No Data Archiving)
Allowing tables to grow indefinitely without archival or cleanup strategies. Common with logs, audit records, and historical data where the assumption...
Inflexible Schema Migration
Schema design and deployment processes that make database changes extremely difficult or require downtime. Includes lack of online DDL support, huge t...
Distributed Consensus Schema Weakness
Failures in distributed systems where different nodes operate with incompatible schemas, consensus rules, or protocol versions. This includes blockcha...
API Rate Limiting and Enumeration Weakness
APIs that lack proper rate limiting, use predictable identifiers (sequential IDs), and don't verify authorization for each request. This allows attack...
Cloud IAM Permission Overreach
Cloud IAM roles and policies configured with excessive permissions, violating the principle of least privilege. This includes EC2 instances with broad...
Healthcare Data Pipeline Resilience Weakness
Healthcare data processing systems designed without resilience mechanisms like circuit breakers, backpressure handling, or graceful degradation. These...
Third-Party Integration Security Weakness
Security vulnerabilities introduced through third-party integrations, including excessive permissions granted to vendors, lack of activity monitoring,...
Migration Backup and Recovery Weakness
Migration processes executed without verified backup and recovery capabilities. This includes untested backups, missing recovery procedures, lack of b...
Configuration Schema Migration Weakness
Migration processes that leave configuration systems in inconsistent states, particularly when migrating between configuration management systems. Thi...
Spreadsheet-as-Database Anti-pattern
Using spreadsheet applications (Excel, Google Sheets, etc.) as production databases for critical data processing. This includes hitting row/column lim...
Legacy System Brittleness
Legacy systems (often decades old) that cannot adapt to modern demands, lacking elasticity, scalability, or ability to handle unexpected load patterns...
Monolithic Database Architecture
Architectural pattern where diverse functionalities share a single database cluster, creating resource contention, scaling limitations, and blast radi...