56 karma · joined August 26, 2009
Sure sharding is scaling, although there are several types of sharding, with varying degrees of scalability. Usually people use a combination of both database (which what I was talking about) and table sharding (w/ replication,clustering,etc.) to achieve scalability. I've encountered several highly-scalable db environments like these.
It's not application-transparent
There are several databases that have features that can make sharding transparent to your application.
and it's an operational nightmare
it depends on the RDBMS that you're using.
here's an interesting paper on sharding with Oracle vs. Mysql
http://www.oracle.com/technology/deploy/availability/pdf/ora...
Also, when used in active-active configuration, replication actually decreases the reliability of your application by the number of replicated nodes, because you're increasing the number of point of failures in your application (although scalability increases). Replication increases reliability only if used in an active-passive configuration. I've ran into this issue over and over again.
and tell me which one is bloated.
Remember the Tanenbaum vs. Torvalds debate?
I wonder what Linus thinks about it now.
btw, here they are together.
'It's not the age honey, it's the mileage'
No.
online classes supplement traditional classroom interaction, it doesn't replace it.