Question: Imagine a web server for a simplified search engine. This system has 100 machines to respond to search queries, which may then call out using processSearch(string query) to another cluster of machines to actually get the result. The machine which responds to a given query is chosen at random so you cannot guarantee that the same machine will always respond to the same request. The method processSearch is very expensive. Design a caching mechanism for the most recent queries. Be sure to explain how you would update the cache when data changes.

From: Cracking the Coding Interview [McDowell]

Subject: System Design and Scalability

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