OStatic

For many developers focused on applications that reside on the web, including open source developers working on database-centric and software-as-a-service sites, the issue of scaling applications is increasingly important. You can find a couple of recent columns we did on cloud computing solutions for scaling applications here. Today, a post on scalability over at James Hamilton's blog caught my eye. He starts out with a discussion of how the database architecture underlying Flickr is constructed, but what's really striking is hisﾠ collection of posts from around the web on how sites ranging from Craigslist to Technorati to Second Life approach scalability.

Ever wonder how YouTube got started and scaled up to being such a huge repository of video? There are quite a few surprises in the story, as you'll see if you check in on NewTeeVee's post Early YouTube Engineer Tells All. It features video of Cuong Do, an early software engineer at YouTube who is now a manager in the site's engineering group. Open sourcers will be particularly interested in how YouTube employs memcached and Apache along its chain of under-the-hood applications. Check it out.