Hi Mark,
as I understand that article with 'redundancy' they mean a active multi-node cluster.
Like Oracle RAC or DB2 Partitioning.
MaxDB does not support this feature and afaik won't support this in the forseeable future.
It's very difficult to implement such a solution - Oracle e.g. took it years (from Parallel Server on 7.3 to RAC on 9i) to come up with something that finally does scale up and can still be sensible from a commercial point of view.
Clustering a DB is a completely different thing than clustering a Web-Server.
Remember the database is the single point where all application/webservers go to in order to get the most current data. And that data is depends on other data (referential constraints etc.). This has to be managed when setting up a clustered DB.
Pagerequests on the other side are independent of each other.
It's no issue to have a user get the first page from server A, the next page from server B and so on. No relation between them that needs to be maintained.
Another point is: databases that should be used on clustered dbms have to be designed for it.
The author of that article wants "a scalable, redundant relational database that is as simple to use as to buy N cheap PCs linked together via LAN running this DB system that makes it easy to add more servers as needed."
Basically he's totally ignorant to the fact that this approach doesn't work with the expensive commercial dbms either.
Scalability is not so much a question of adding machines - but one of correct and sensible application design and implementation. Something - as it appears - that is far too often skipped when creating Web-Applications.
And no: scalability is never transparent. Really never - not even for the Google App Engine mentioned in the article.
The "kill it with iron"-approach may be what suits the authors liking for simplicity (and apparently that of far too many decision makers as well) but it's no guarantee for a scalable application. Even worse, in most cases it will just burn money.
To my experience MaxDB (as well as the other DBMS SAP uses) has no issue with growing load by Web-Applications.
Actually MaxDB serves the SDN, the SAP Support Message system, the Service Marketplace ... I'd even say: it's pretty good for heavy load applications.
But - of course - as long as you're used to make up application design that does not scale - your application will not scale.
Ok - that one got lengthly... still just my 2 pence.
regards,
Lars
Bluesky
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