[development] Tip for large site scaling: tracker.module considered harmful

[John Handelaar]

Khalid B wrote:
> Seems like your site should move to a more modern ACID table
> database, for example switching from MyISAM to Inno should
> help, since it provides row level locking.

Well, yeah, but as I tried to get across, there are two
parts to this.  Fixing MyISAM is one (not something we can
or should address), fixing indexless mega-queries is
quite another.

tracker.module (on this site) hit over 9 million rows on
a query which may return none.  Ideally it should hit
indexes and return none right now, not in 11 minutes' time.

Comment module, as shipped, is similarly expensive, but
more easily fixed (a simple "add index" or two fixed that).

I know Dries is having a think about my forum request before
tomorrow, so I'm hoping for a yea then.  Meanwhile I think:
that, generally speaking, we *do* have the answers for these
performance bumps-in-the-road;  that it would help us to
make a place to consolidate those discussions rather than
having them dotted around private blogs, bug reports and
uncommitted patches; and that making that place visible might
(as a side effect) make it more obvious to the casual observer
that Drupal can punch at this weight.


OK.  That's one more argument in favour than I intended to
make today.  :)


jh

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