(2007-04-16) Twitter Rails Scaling

Twitter uses Ruby On Rails.

Alex Payne complained about Scalability problems, esp associated with Rails supporting connection to only a single Data Base.

DHH http://www.loudthinking.com/arc/000608.html |replies

• then points to a sudden patch by NicWilliams to support multi dbs. In the comments, Blaine Cook provides more details of the actual Twitter situation: For the record, Twitter is not currently database bound, and won't be for at least a month (unless our growth rate increases), something that David was aware of when we spoke to him a couple of weeks ago... The current largest bottleneck we have without a clear solution (other than hand-optimization) is the cost of rendering templates (Template System)... I hope that my talk on Sunday at S D Forum will clarify our experience with Rails at Twitter, and offer insights to others. Here's Blaine's own blog post.

Another perspective on talking to multiple databases.

Jens Alfke wonders whether a Data Base is even needed, vs just using the File System.