Code Future's DBShards Helps Ease Database Expansion

Databases run the Internet; they’re the underlying technology that makes everything work, and as user traffic continues to grow its incumbent on any company utilizing them to make sure they have enough space to make sure their applications run smoothly. Unfortunately the same traffic that’s making the cloud such a huge space for growth is also in a way making it quickly need expansion. DBshards from Code futures is changing that.

The latest start up from IT industry veteran Cory Isaacson, DBshards focuses on transparent database sharding , as in breaking databases apart and putting them back together. The toolset basically helps customers with the breakup of large, over capacity databases into multiple, less populated one.  Since databases slow down as they get older, DBshards can help a customer get back to business as they grow beyond their original intentions.

Most of CodeFutuer’s customers are cloud customers primarily because the disk IO on the space is a lot slower so customers end up hitting their peak capacity faster.

As Isaacson pointed out when we met with him at this year’s Cloud Expo, online gaming and social networking applications are a hot button for database sharding.

One of the company’s biggest customer Cartown, is a Facebook (News - Alert) game with over a million active user day to day, and up to 8 million monthly. Anytime one of those users logs on, the game needs to be able to record the players interactions. Changes in profile, rewards collected and other online factors need to be constantly updated in the database to make the game work. This means that Cartown needs to be prepared to expand at a moment’s notice to keep their games up and running.

With the rampant growth in the social gaming industry the need for more database space is absolutely essential to the enjoyment of millions over platforms like Facebook. “It’s kind of surprising, and I never would have guessed but they’ve become a huge market for this technology.” Isaacson said at Cloud Expo.

Considering the runaway success of games like Farmville, these companies grow so fast, they have no idea what kind of volume they will need, “they become a victim of their own success and then they need us.

As a testament to DBshards continued success, the company has announced an update to its platform. The 2.4 release will offer a more robust set of tools, and added features like cross shard transactions, which will allow customer to write to two shards at once, a feature not available in any other sharding technology.

DBShards will to continue to help companies expand databases as they grow beyond expectation.

Chris DiMarco is a Web Editor for TMCnet. He holds a master's degree in journalism from Quinnipiac University. Prior to joining TMC (News - Alert) Chris worked with e-commerce provider Suresource as a contact center representative and development analyst. To read more of his articles, please visit his columnist page. Follow him on Twitter @cpdimarco.

Edited by Rich Steeves