Architectural Design issues: Scale Up and Scale Out

Scale up is about vertical scalability. This means increasing the capacity by adding more CPU and memory.

Scale out is about horizontal scalability. This means increasing the number of servers available.

Brent Ozar wrote a couple of really interesting articles

Scaling up or scaling out?
http://www.brentozar.com/archive/2011/02/scaling-up-or-scaling-out/
Scaling up of scaling out? part 2
http://www.brentozar.com/archive/2011/03/scaling-up-or-scaling-out-part-two/

Interesting analogy here
Scale Up or Scale Out your Data Problems? A Space Analogy
http://dennyglee.com/2012/01/24/scale-up-or-scale-out-your-data-problems-a-space-analogy/

2012 SQL Year of the Dragon

The year 2012 is associated in Chinese astrology with power and wisdom. With the release of SQL Server 2012 this year we will see the power of the product multiply with a vast array of new features. But what will the future of data and databases bring. There are many post around trying to predict where the database world will shift this year. Here are a few that took my interest

Michael Stonebraker thinks

• one size no longer fits all
• “big data” means three different things  (could mean big volume, velocity and too much variety of data sources)
• ACID [atomicity, consistency, isolation, durability] is still a really good idea
• Think memory. It’s the new disk

http://searchdatamanagement.techtarget.com/news/2240113325/Michael-Stonebraker-predicts-trouble-for-relational-databases-in-2012

Forrester Predictions for 2012 are that

• Enterprise Hadoop deployments will expand at a rapid clip
• In-memory analytics platforms will grow their footprint
• Graph databases will come into vogue

http://blogs.forrester.com/james_kobielus/11-12-19-the_year_ahead_in_big_data_big_cool_new_stuff_looms_large

Edd Dumbill lists the five big data predictions for 2012 as

• More powerful and expressive tools for analysis
• Streaming data processing
• Rise of data marketplaces
• Development of data science workflows and tools
• Increased understanding of and demand for visualization

http://radar.oreilly.com/2011/12/5-big-data-predictions-2012.html

Big Data, analytics get even bigger, hotter in 2012 as Chris Kanaracus writes

• Big Data is not going away
• In-memory processing will be the belle of the ball
• Will analytics-as-a-service take off?
• BI and analytics start showing up everywhere

http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9222996/Big_Data_analytics_get_even_bigger_hotter_in_2012?taxonomyId=18&pageNumber=1

How wise will we become from all this additional data and knowledge?  Data will rule the day and it will be provided by which ever tool meets the requirements, whether it be SQL, NoSQL, Oracle, MySQL etc.