Horizontal Scaling of SQL Databases?

still_sick writes "I'm currently responsible for operations at a software-as-a-service startup, and we're increasingly hitting limitations in what we can do with relational databases. We've been looking at various NoSQL stores and I've been following Adrian Cockcroft's blog at Netflix which compares the various options. I was intrigued by the most recent entry, about Translattice, which purports to provide many of the same scaling advantages for SQL databases. Is this even possible given the CAP theorem? Is anyone using a system like this in production?"

Comments

What company?

[MeanMF]

Please post the name of your company so we can learn more about what kind of data you're storing and what kind of issues you are seeing. And so we can avoid using your services until you hire somebody competent. Thanks.

Losers mock

[cheesedog]

You guys posting that traditional relational databases can handle the load of internet scale applications kill me. You mock this guy who has a legit problem that everyone who has ever run an internet scale technology is very familiar with.

NoSQL isn't some passing fad invented by high school kids.

Luckily, most of you will probably never discover that fact for yourselves, because you'll never have experience with a successful internet-scale architecture. Relational DBs are just fine for internal "enterprisey" apps, or for your hobby website that drives an astounding 1200 page views/month, or for your failed attempt at launching a web service that only ever garners 300,000 users, so you can continue to delude yourselves that there just isn't a problem here, and SQL is the only skillset you'll ever need.

For the elite few who actually achieve success, you'll totally know where the OP is coming from. Intimately. And you'll either be very glad that there is a path (hadoop, cassandra, mongodb, etc) to migrate to that solves your problems, or you'll be very glad that you started with one of those solutions in the first place.