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[This post was originally published in October 2022. It has been updated to reflect current product offerings.] Traditionally, one of the stickiest decisions developers need to make when creating a database is choosing how many servers to use based on expected application traffic. Guess too low and your db could fall over under load, causing an outage. Guess too high, you pay for servers that just sit idle most of the time. Spiky loads? Uh oh, gotta overprovision to make sure those surges get handled even if it means wasted capacity 90%+ of the time.

Michelle Gienow

August 18, 2023

Indexes can have a significant impact on database performance. Let’s take a look at one type that’s especially important for searching text: the inverted index.

Charlie Custer

August 17, 2023

In my experience as a software engineer (and generally as a human, come to think of it), it seems to be universally easier to go from 2 to 3 of something, than it is to go from 1 to 2. For example, if your application already supports 2 languages, adding a 3rd is simple; whereas, if your application only supports 1 language, you need to build support for internationalization, before you can add the 2nd. The same holds true for application architecture; adding a 3rd region to an application that’s already distributed and supports multiple regions is much easier than making a single region application distributed (can run across multiple machines) and then multi-region (region/locality awareness).

Rob Reid

August 14, 2023

Everyone loves a dramatic finish. And with past winners the United States now eliminated from the 2023 FIFA Women’s World Cup, some drama is guaranteed. Will England’s women bring it home for the first time ever? Will the Netherlands avenge their 2019 finals loss? Will a nation that has never made the finals – perhaps Australia, playing at home for this tournament, or Jamaica in their first-ever survival round – grab a surprise win?

Charlie Custer

August 7, 2023

Dealing with distributed database performance issues? Let’s talk about CDNs. Even though they’re at different levels of your tech stack, distributed databases and content delivery networks often share a similar goal: improving the availability and speed between your service and your user.

Migrating to a new database is an exciting and daunting challenge. There is tremendous upside for applications and operations at the end of the migration process, but all too often the migration takes longer than expected or is left in a partially complete state. Many technical challenges are well solved but stakeholders have different goals that complicate completing the migration successfully and on time. You can avoid common pitfalls and get your new database completely serving production data on a reliable timeline by asking and answering the following five questions:

A data pipeline is a piece of software that ingests data from one or more sources, and moves that data to one or more destinations. Often, the data is transformed as part of this process to ensure that it meets the requirements of the system or systems it is being sent to.

Charlie Custer

August 2, 2023

Ticketmaster was recently in the news after a major system meltdown when tickets for Taylor Swift’s latest concert tour went on sale. Response from Taylor Swift’s listenership — a population of such size and economic influence it probably qualifies for its own spot in the United Nations — crashed the ticket sales platform under the sheer weight of demand. Thousands of furious fans vented their frustration on social media as they waited for hours in a virtual buying queue, only to be kicked out. Others finally got in, only to watch tickets disappear from their carts before they could check out.

Michelle Gienow

July 31, 2023

Surviving a hackathon as a sponsor without becoming a complete zombie is no joke. To start, you’ll have plenty of practical, technical concerns that have to be sorted (How do you get people to try your product? Will the hackers be familiar with your application’s language?). But once you’ve got the technical issues taken care of, you’ll likely have nearly as many questions about how to keep your team as sane and functional as possible––despite running on limited sleep, consuming excessive caffeine, and likely being completely out of their comfort zones.

Jessica Edwards

July 31, 2023