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Meta: Site Performance Issues - We are Aware and are Making Plans

posted by martyb on Wednesday October 10 2018, @03:00PM   Printer-friendly

martyb writes:

As you probably have noticed, our site has been a bit sluggish lately.

We are aware of the issue and are developing plans for dealing with it. The primary issue lies in the database structure and contents. On-the-fly joins across multiple tables cause a performance hit which is exacerbated by the number of stories we have posted over the years (yes, it HAS been that long... YAY!). Further, stories which have been "archived" — allowing no further comments or moderation — are still sitting in the in-RAM DB and could be offloaded to disk for long-term access. Once offloaded, there would be much less data in the in-RAM database (queries against empty DBs tend to be pretty quick!) so this should result in improved responsiveness.

A complicating factor is that changing the structure on a live, replicated database would cause most every page load to 500 out. So the database has to be offlined and the code updated. That would likely entail on the order of the better part of a day. Obviously, shorter is better. On the other hand "The longest distance between two points is a short cut." We're aiming to do it right, the first time, and be done with it, rather than doing it quick-and-dirty, which usually ends up being not quick and quite dirty.

So, we ARE aware of the performance issues, are working towards a solution, and don't want to cause any more disruption than absolutely necessary.

We will give notice well in advance of taking any actions.

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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 10 2018, @09:34PM (3 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 10 2018, @09:34PM (#747150)

    As far as updating a DB schema live, it should not be an issue...

    It should if you try to insert a row into a table that suddenly has fewer columns or more columns that can't be null but default to null to keep screwed up rows from being inserted. Or if you try to pull data from a missing column. Adding an index or a view we should be able to get away with but those aren't the only changes that need to be made.

    So you're saying no-problemo?

  • (Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Wednesday October 10 2018, @10:29PM

    by The Mighty Buzzard (18) Subscriber Badge <themightybuzzard@proton.me> on Wednesday October 10 2018, @10:29PM (#747175) Homepage Journal

    More or less. It should be time consuming not difficult.

    --
    My rights don't end where your fear begins.

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 10 2018, @11:31PM (1 child)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 10 2018, @11:31PM (#747201)

    "So you're saying no-problemo?"

    I said that once. And then I learned. Murphy is always lurking in the background and ready to spring into action.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 11 2018, @02:36PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 11 2018, @02:36PM (#747437)

      That's why you should say “won't work”. Then the only way it can go wrong is by actually working.