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 Mobile - Web - Media  Thursday, Jan 25, 2007 2:07:43 PM
Optimizing and Scaling Web Apps After reading about MySpace dealt with their scaling up to support millions of users, I decided it was a good idea to review my application's architechture, and identify what areas could scale independently, and what areas need optimization.I first outlined the application that generates ArtistServer into seven parts - there's opportunity for optimization everywhere, so by looking at the applicaiton in different ways, I feel you can better identify those optimization points.
For example, the following are already functioning as sub-applications:
Stats and Tracking The application tracks data on artist/member sites, but only those who've upgraded, and for all artists, we track all streams and downloads to their music. Actually, we filter out repeat streams in a 24hr period by the same IP to keep people from gaming the charts. All the calls to the stats tables were something that could happen asynchronously. There wasn't a need for the processes that were being tracked to have to wait for the tracking process to complete before completing themselves. For example, you have an artist page, and starting at the top, you would have a query to the database to return that person's record, and another query that tracks the access to the page, another to return their songs, etc. In this case, each query is happening in sequence, which means one has to complete before the other can execute. Since the capturing of the stats data and writing to the database isn't going to be displayed on the page nor get used in any other portion of the code, it's a prime candidate for becoming an asynchronous process. After I wrote a new stats object, I set it up on a separate server from the main application server (so my asynchronous stats calls don't compete for resources on the main server), I replaced my stats script on the artist and member pages with a call to the AsyncHTTP object by Compound Theory (a ColdFusion CFC that uses Java), ran some tests, then took it live. Now when the page executes, and the AsyncHTTP object calls my stats server, the page continues to process without waiting, shaving off several milliseconds from every request to an artist or member page. The same thing will be done with the mp3 tracking on the site, which as you can imagine, should make the process of requesting an mp3 for streaming and/or download faster for everyone. After that, I'll break the stats tables out into their own database, so the main database can be free to handle the application, and the stats database can grow independently. Initially, I'll still run the database on the same database server, but the point is, that at any time, that's a viable scaling option - the stats could easily be setup on it's own database server or server cluster. Sounds like fun eh? :) Objectize, Optimize, Modularize, Asynchronize Create and extend objects. After completing changes to the three zones I identified as potential sub-applicaitons, I'll go back over my outline and analysis, and start working on addressing the issues I've listed. While I'm sure there we will still have growing pains as we scale up, I feel the timeinvested now not only delays that experience, but also prepares us for that day. Another plus from this process, is that more of the application is getting documented, something that rarely gets done with Web projects. 
ArtistServer
asynchronous
optimizing
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