Facebook trapped in MySQL fate worse than death Excerpts:
According to database pioneer Michael Stonebraker, Facebook is operating a huge, complex MySQL implementation equivalent to a fate worse than death, and the only way out is bite the bullet and rewrite everything. Not that its necessarily Facebooks fault, though. Stonebraker says the social networks predicament is all too common among web startups that start small and grow to epic proportions. ... During an interview this week, Stonebraker explained to me that Facebook has split its MySQL database into 4,000 shards<http://www.mysqlperformanceblog.com/2009/08/06/why-you-dont-want-to-shard/>in order to handle the sites massive data volume, and is running 9,000 instances of memcached in order to keep up with the number of transactions the database must serve. ... The widely accepted problem with MySQL is that it wasnt built for webscale applications or those that must handle excessive transaction volumes. Stonebraker said the problem with MySQL and other SQL databases is that they consume too many resources for overhead tasks (e.g., maintaining ACID compliance <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ACID> and handling multithreading) and relatively few on actually finding and serving data. This might be fine for a small application with a small data set, but it quickly becomes too much to handle as data and transaction volumes grow. ... In Stonebrakers opinion, old SQL (as he calls it) is good for nothing and needs to be sent to the home for retired software. After all, he explained, SQL was created decades ago before the web, mobile devices and sensors forever changed how and how often databases are accessed. But products such as MySQL are also open-source and free, and SQL skills arent hard to come by. This means, Stonebraker says, that when web startups decide they need to build a product in a hurry, MySQL is natural choice. But then they hit that hockey-stick-like growth rate like Facebook did, and they dont really have the time to re-engineer the service from the database up. Instead, he said, they end up applying Band-Aid fixes that solve problems as they occur, but that never really fix the underlying problem of an inadequate data-management strategy. ... There have been various attempts to overcome SQLs performance and scalability problems, including the buzzworthy NoSQL movement that burst onto the scene a couple of years ago. However, it was quickly discovered that while NoSQL might be faster and scale better, it did so at the expense of ACID consistency.As I explained in a post earlier this year about Citrusleaf, a NoSQL provider claiming to maintain ACID properties: ACID is an acronym for Atomicity, Consistency, Isolation, Durability a relatively complicated way of saying transactions are performed reliably and accurately, which can be very important in situations like e-commerce, where every transaction relies on the accuracy of the data set. Stonebraker thinks sacrificing ACID is a terrible idea, and, he noted, NoSQL databases end up only being marginally faster because they require writing certain consistency and other functions into the applications business logic. ... But Stonebraker an entrepreneur as much as a computer scientist has an answer for the shortcoming of both old SQL and NoSQL. Its called NewSQL (a term coined by 451 Group analyst Matthew Aslett) or scalable SQL, as Ive referred to it in the past. Pushed by companies such as Xeround, Clustrix, NimbusDB, GenieDB and Stonebrakers own VoltDB, NewSQL products maintain ACID properties while eliminating most of the other functions that slow legacy SQL performance. VoltDB, an online-transaction processing (OLTP) database, utilizes a number of methods to improve speed, including by running entirely in-memory instead of on disk. Interesting. Read more here: http://gigaom.com/cloud/facebook-trapped-in-mysql-fate-worse-than-death/ J - Ninety percent of politicians give the other ten percent a bad reputation. - Henry Kissinger Politicians are people who, when they see light at the end of the tunnel, go out and buy so ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~| Order the Adobe Coldfusion Anthology now! http://www.amazon.com/Adobe-Coldfusion-Anthology/dp/1430272155/?tag=houseoffusion Archive: http://www.houseoffusion.com/groups/cf-community/message.cfm/messageid:340057 Subscription: http://www.houseoffusion.com/groups/cf-community/subscribe.cfm Unsubscribe: http://www.houseoffusion.com/groups/cf-community/unsubscribe.cfm
