Storing User Timelines in Riak

The idea of building and storing user timelines (think Twitter) in Riak confused me at first. It sounds like such a spot-on case for time series databases. Yet Yammer managed to make the idea pretty popular. The whole thing lacked implementation though, because they kept their to themselves, which I don’t blame them for at all.

The Simple Magic of Consistent Hashing

The simplicity of consistent hashing is pretty mind-blowing. Here you have a number of nodes in a cluster of databases, or in a cluster of web caches. How do you figure out where the data for a particular key goes in that cluster?

An Update On The NoSQL Handbook

A couple of months ago I set out to write a book on NoSQL. It’s about time I give an update on how it’s been going, and when you can expect a book in your hands, or rather, on your screen.

Web Operations 101 For Developers

This post is not about devops, it’s not about lean startups, it’s not about web scale, it’s not about the cloud, and it’s not about continuous deployment. This post is about you, the developer who’s main purpose in life has always been to build great web applications. In a pretty traditional world you write code, you write tests for it, you deploy, and you go home. Until now.