Web Performance Matters

My recent post, Asynchronous Architectures [4], summarized a presentation by Werner Vogels at the 2007 QCON conference in London.

A subsequent post by Kent Langley in his new ProductionScale blog -- entitled Getting Rid of the Relational Database -- supports the arguments advanced by Vogels.

Describing the relational database model as "the proverbial ball and chain in the relationship between scalable applications and the underlying infrastructure," Kent writes:

The quest for seamless linear growth for technology applications is being hindered by the “elephant database.”

What would Amazon do? In a recent talk2 at QCON London Werner Vogel, the CTO of Amazon.com clearly noted that the relational database model is a essentially outdated for the needs of modern applications as a primary data storage medium. In other words, it is simply to slow and cumbersome.

Additionally, Mr. Vogel makes a critical point that in many, many cases relational databases are simply not necessary. Simple key/value pairs (hashes) are all you need.

--Joseph Kent Langley, Getting Rid of the Relational Database, August 11, 2007

Kent goes on to describe why he believes "you should break out of a one-size-fits-all way of thinking when it comes to databases, data storage, and scalable systems. Vertical scaling by throwing hardware at it is no longer sufficient for modern web scale applications".

Kent also points to Data 2.0: How the Web disrupts our relational database world, which he admits he has not read. Maybe if he had read the article he might have omitted this link.

Although the author of that article, Nitin Borwankar, supports Vogel's general conclusions, his style is to make sweeping pronouncements. He advances no technical arguments that lead up to his conclusion that "The days of Data 1.0 are past. The days of Data 2.0 are dawning, and it promises to be very disruptive for mainstream database architectures on the Web".

Other posts about scalability

I recommend Kent's new blog, and I'm adding it to my blogroll. It looks as if it will contain regular discussions of performance topics. For example, since launching the blog in early August, Kent has already written about:

• Scalable LAMP: Caching
• Varnish - A Web Accelerator [a fast reverse proxy caching system]
• The Power of mod_deflate [about content compression]
• Scalability and Performance: A Few Resources
• Testing with WBox [about scalability testing]

Proofread before publishing

I do have one small complaint. As a blogger, I know the feeling of writing down my thoughts and wanting to get them published -- right now! The short publishing cycle is one of the attractions of a blog. But if Kent could just curb his enthusiasm for long enough to proofread his posts once carefully before hitting that Publish button, his thoughts would be a lot easier to follow:

Huh?

• Afterwards, I will follow up with a brief analysis or executive summary if you will of this infobit might mean for businesses. Needs commas around "if you will," and "of" should be "of what".
• By way if example using the techniques of bond arbitrage Stonebraker notes quite earnestly that it is a “latency arms race.” Needs commas around "using ... arbitrage," and "if" should be "of".
• So, is this inconclusive evidence of the pending death of the Relational Database? Of course not. "Inconclusive" should be "conclusive".
• But, it is trend spotting in that people are again noticing that there are other ways and that those other ways just might quite faster with modern applications. "might quite" should be "might be".

--Joseph Kent Langley, Getting Rid of the Relational Database, August 11, 2007

Although I can infer what Kent is trying to say here, these glitches spoil the overall effect by forcing me to re-read his sentences to get the point. In elementary school, I learned the old English proverb: Don't spoil the ship for a ha'pworth of tar. I believe bloggers should consider readability to be as important as their message, if they want to build a faithful following.

Tags: scalability, Kent Langley, ProductionScale, Werner Vogels, QCON, relational database, Web applications, Performance Matters