The Movie Database Support

Dear TMDB Team,

I’m reaching out to better understand how TMDB’s API infrastructure handles data updates and to explore potential strategies for reducing latency in reflecting changes.

As a user of your API, I’ve observed that updates (e.g., metadata edits, new entries) take significant time to propagate. Based on industry practices, this delay could stem from factors like: Caching mechanisms (e.g., CDN/in-memory caches with longer TTLs), Batch processing of updates instead of real-time handling, Database constraints (e.g., write bottlenecks in relational systems), Geographical replication lag.

Could you share insights into how TMDB currently manages these aspects? For instance:

Are updates processed in batches, or is there a real-time event-driven system in place? How is caching optimized to balance performance and freshness of data? Are there plans to adopt edge computing, distributed databases, or CQRS/event-sourcing patterns to minimize latency?

I’d appreciate any details on TMDB’s roadmap for improving update responsiveness. Thank you for your time and for providing such a valuable service to the community!

Best regards.

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