Imagine you’re tasked with designing a system to generate unique IDs. The requirements seem simple at first, but as you dig deeper, you realize there’s more to consider. Let’s walk through the key questions you might ask:

What are the characteristics of unique IDs?

• They must be unique across your entire system
• They should be sortable, especially by time
• They need to be generated quickly and efficiently

MapReduce is a highly influential programming model that has transformed the way we process and analyze large-scale data sets.