Clickstream Modeling

Modeling User Behavior as Events Clickstream data is the most common event stream in data engineering. Every page view, button click, scroll, and search is captured as an event. The volume is massive (millions to billions of events per day) and the schema is semi-structured (each event type has different properties). Clickstream events typically share a common schema: event_id, user_id, session_id, event_type, event_timestamp, page_url, and a properties payload with event-specific data. The properties vary by event type: a 'purchase' event has amount and product_id, a 'search' event has query_text and result_count. Sessionization Raw clickstream events do not have a session_id. A session is a derived concept: a group of events by the same user with no gap longer than N minutes (typically 3

About This Interactive Section

This section is part of the Event Streams lesson on DataDriven, a free data engineering interview prep platform. Each section includes explanations, worked examples, and hands-on code challenges that execute in real time. SQL queries run against a live PostgreSQL database. Python runs in a sandboxed Docker container. Data modeling problems validate against interactive schema canvases. All content is framed around what data engineering interviewers actually test at companies like Meta, Google, Amazon, Netflix, Stripe, and Databricks.

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