Re:SQL Databases Don't Scale
by nettdata on Tuesday July 07, 2009 @03:21AM
(#691082)
I agree... never meant to imply that Facebook had fewer hits/etc than a banking site in raw numbers, just that the ratio of DB reads (not considered a transaction, very easy to cache, etc) to DB writes, makes the site much more read-only than write-only.
Facebook has the ability to do a TON of edge caching, with very few (relatively speaking) operations having to go to the database to perform an actual write operation.
It's the DB writes that really kill performance and limit your caching strategies and gains.
Re:SQL Databases Don't Scale
by ntoshev on Tuesday July 07, 2009 @05:36AM
(#691204)
My guess is apps hosted on Heroku (like the majority of the internet applications) are a lot like Facebook and little like online banking: they don't really need reliable transactions, they need to be flexible, scalable and cost-effective.
Facebook has the ability to do a TON of edge caching, with very few (relatively speaking) operations having to go to the database to perform an actual write operation.
It's the DB writes that really kill performance and limit your caching strategies and gains.