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World Congress 2024 • Aug 20, 2024 • Session details

Scaling Databases

Tobias Petry

Is your database crashing under the weight of a rapidly growing application? Learn to avoid premature architectural sprawl by mastering indexing, replication, and caching before tackling complex sharding.

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#1 about 3 min

Recognizing the database as the primary scaling bottleneck

Programming languages and frameworks rarely cause system failures compared to underlying database limitations.

#2 about 2 min

Optimizing database queries and implementing application caching strategies

Fixing slow queries through better indexes and applying caching should precede multi-server scaling.

#3 about 1 min

Scaling up by increasing single server hardware capacity

Upgrading server memory and CPU cores provides a simple performance boost before adopting complex topologies.

#4 about 4 min

Evaluating multi-master replication for database architectures

Synchronous dual-primary setups can introduce data conflict errors and reduce overall write performance during traffic spikes.

#5 about 3 min

Implementing read replication and managing asynchronous lag

Routing read operations to secondary servers increases capacity but requires application logic to handle asynchronous replication delays.

#6 about 3 min

Understanding the latency costs of synchronous read replication

Waiting for multiple distributed read replicas to acknowledge writes synchronously significantly degrades query execution speeds.

#7 about 4 min

Distributing data across multiple database servers with sharding

Splitting workloads across identical databases allows infinite scaling but complicates contextual data aggregation and cross-table joins.

#8 about 2 min

Managing sharding complexity with specialized database proxy solutions

Abstraction layers like Vitess and Citus manage internal routing complexities but restrict the availability of standard SQL features.

#9 about 3 min

Prioritizing architectural simplicity over infinite scalability solutions

Avoiding premature scaling optimizations and maintaining minimal database topologies prevents costly architecture rewrites and unexpected bugs.

Matching moments

3:35 min

The challenges of scaling single-node database architectures

Daniël van Eeden Daniël van Eeden +1 · WWC Europe 2026

6:36 min

Overcoming scaling bottlenecks caused by commercial database limitations

Werner Vogels Werner Vogels · WWC 2025

2:19 min

Scaling infrastructure for peak application traffic patterns

Stefan Lingler Stefan Lingler +1 · Coffee With Developers

2:18 min

Scaling MySQL databases for massive user growth

Johannes Nicolai Johannes Nicolai +1 · LIVE

1:40 min

Deployment architectures for scalable multi-tenant database environments

Alper Ebicoglu Alper Ebicoglu · WWC 2025

3:29 min

Evaluating scalability trade-offs and complexity in distributed databases

Hartmut Armbruster Hartmut Armbruster · WWC 2024

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