How would you design an app like Uber?

Uber, the renowned transportation network company, operates at a massive scale, connecting millions of riders with drivers across the globe. Behind the scenes, Uber's intricate system architecture powers its platform, handling millions of requests, coordinating logistics, and ensuring a seamless experience for users. In this article, we'll explore the system design considerations for Uber, covering both non-technical and technical requirements, as well as low-level and high-level designs.

Non-Technical Requirements

Scalability: Uber's system must handle a vast volume of concurrent requests from users across different regions without experiencing performance degradation.
Reliability: The platform must be highly reliable, ensuring minimal downtime and service disruptions to maintain user trust and satisfaction.
Availability: Uber's services should be available 24/7 to accommodate users' transportation needs at any time of day or night.
Safety and Security: The platform must prioritize user safety and data security, implementing measures to protect both riders and drivers from potential risks.
User Experience: Uber aims to deliver a seamless and intuitive user experience across its mobile app and web interface, simplifying the process of booking rides and managing trips.

Technical Requirements

Real-Time Data Processing: Uber's system must process and analyze real-time data streams, including user requests, driver locations, traffic conditions, and payment transactions.
Geospatial Algorithms: The platform utilizes geospatial algorithms to match riders with nearby drivers efficiently, considering factors such as distance, traffic congestion, and driver availability.
High Availability: Uber's architecture employs redundant components, load balancers, and failover mechanisms to ensure high availability and fault tolerance.
Scalable Infrastructure: The system architecture is designed to scale horizontally to handle spikes in demand during peak hours or special events without performance degradation.
Microservices Architecture: Uber adopts a microservices-based architecture, decomposing its monolithic application into smaller, independently deployable services to facilitate scalability, agility, and maintainability.

Earlier Uber was using the RDBMS PostgreSQL database but due to scalability issues uber switched to various databases. Uber uses a NoSQL database (schemaless) built on top of the MySQL database. Redis for both caching and queuing. Some are behind Twemproxy (which provides scalability of the caching layer). Some are behind a custom clustering system. Uber uses Schemaless (built in-house on top of MySQL), Riak, and Cassandra. Schemaless is for long-term data storage. Riak and Cassandra meet high-availability, low-latency demands MySQL database. Uber is building their own distributed column store that’s orchestrating a bunch of MySQL instances.

Uber's system design embodies a sophisticated blend of cutting-edge technologies, scalable architectures, and user-centric features to deliver a seamless transportation experience to millions of users worldwide. By addressing both non-technical and technical requirements, Uber has established itself as a pioneer in the on-demand transportation industry, setting the standard for reliability, efficiency, and innovation in system design.