Dedicated Servers + Scalable Web Architectures

[Jamon Camisso]

Madison Kelly wrote:
> Lennart Sorensen wrote:
>> Does anyone actually know what Web 2.0 is besides a silly marketing
>> term?
> 
> Glossy icons and Iframes and javascript layering, as far as I can gather.
> 
> So no, just a marketing term.

Data mashups and digital based social interactions. The glossiness is 
just a mask that hides the underlying changes in the ways data are being 
used and the ways in which social interactions are mediated more and 
more by technology that people don't care to understand.

I'm not a luddite who would prefer that the telephone were never 
invented, but some awareness of how these changes affect people and 
society would be nice. Instead of unbridled hysteria over a glossy 
touchscreen phone, understanding the implications of easing barriers to 
communication is, I think, much needed. That is to say, having any sort 
of device like an iPhone, Blackberry, or using a website like Facebook, 
Twitter etc. almost necessitates that those who use such things 
communicate ever more, sacrificing quality for quantity.

Maybe face to face communication is over rated, who am I to say, I know 
what I like though...

> 
>> Well at least in my expeirence, MySQL doesn't scale.  Unless you almost
>> exclusively read from it it doesn't like lots of users.  Postgresql is
>> much much better that way.  I really have no idea why people always seem
>> to go for mysql first rather than looking into what is available and
>> picking the better choice.
> 
> Seconding the recommendation for PostgreSQL over MySQL.

I'll third that. I converted my Drupal site a while back from MySQL to 
Postgresql, and despite all the detractors who said that I should have 
tuned x and optimized for y in MySQL, things are consistently faster and 
more reliable and it works for me. If it ever ended up scaling I'd be 
set from the start too.

> MySQL is fast, that is why it is often chosen. That speed comes at some 
> risk though. PostgreSQL is not perfect, but crashing it is less likely 
> to result in DB data corruption. I don't mean to get this into a MySQL 
> vs. PgSQL argument, others may (will) differ, just take my opinion for 
> what it is; one small vote for reliability based on my anecdotal 
> experience.

Yahoo use MySQL pretty extensively, as do wikipedia. Not saying we 
should too, but if it is good enough for an overvalued company at $40+ 
billion (and make no mistake, Microsoft's interest is in simply buying 
data), then it might just be good enough for us little folk too.

> If I can make a suggestion? Don't worry about scalability and such yet. 
> 99% of projects never get off the ground. Yours might, but likely it 
> will need some time and tweaking. Worrying about high loading and 
> availability is like asking to learn about F1 racing as you set out with 
> your fresh new driver's license. There are more productive things for 
> you to focus on at this point, imho.

That being said, having a stable platform that can easily scale to start 
with will make development work easier instead of having to work around 
various quirks of chosen components if it ends up that they don't scale.

Jamon

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