Monday, April 03, 2006

Werner Vogels on Scalability

Werner Vogels (Amazon CTO) has just posted some notes about Scalability, which he defines thus: 

A service is said to be scalable if when we increase the resources in a system, it results in increased performance in a manner proportional to resources added. 

Scalability is relevant for tools and methods. I have been shown demonstrations of tools that look pretty cool when you've got five web services, but are pretty hopeless when you've got five hundred or five thousand web services. What does a tool do when you have more objects than can reasonably appear on a screen - even with scroll bars? Was the multi-screen, multi-user option conceived from the start, or does it look like an afterthought? 

 

See also Scale and Self-Organization (July 2007)

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