advancedSystem Design for the Persistence Layer — Read Replicas, Sharding & CQRS
Why would you choose CQRS over simply adding read replicas?
Read replicas serve the SAME schema/model for reads and writes, just on separate instances. CQRS is for when read and write access patterns have genuinely diverged — for example, complex search/filtering reads that need a denormalized, purpose-built shape versus simple, normalized transactional writes — letting each side be optimized independently rather than compromising on one shared schema.
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