From ordering food to talking to relatives abroad, our entire world depends on applications. This shows that pressure to build effective applications is not only going to grow soon but would also become the only way to survive in the market. From small companies to big companies everyone requires better and scalable applications without compromising on the user experience to get their work done.
The need for developers with skills to build scalable applications is growing by the hour, and if you could be one of those lucky few, your career can take off to new horizons.
What Is A Scalable System?
A scalable application is a system that works effortlessly regardless of the loads. It should be able to perform without a hitch under any circumstances and levels of load. An application’s scalability usually depends on two or more variables. These variables can include a load metric, time and many others.
To understand this better, let us explain what load is.
What Is A Load Profile?
The load is different for different websites and systems. For instance, if your application is an e-commerce system, the load might be dependent on page views per minute or customers per minute. However, this will not make a whole lot of difference in the database.
But if those customers are placing an order for purchase, then the database records the I/O operations.
Therefore, a system’s load depends on the system architecture and business structure. This is where you can learn about the two-dimensional structure of the load. In the above example, we said that an e-commerce store measures load based on a number of visits per minute.
So it won’t matter if 15,000 people shop at once, but what exactly will happen if a single customer shop for 150 articles of one item? How would the system respond then? To keep such cases in control the load measure of a system is always at least two folds.
How To Deal With A System’s Load?
The best way to ensure better load performance is to anticipate potential challenges that the system might face. That is why one should consider the following while running tests:
- Load metrics
- Load profiles
- How much variable load can your website support
- Resources required to cope with these situations
How To Increase Resource Scalability?
There are two ways in which you can increase stability in terms of resources.
- Vertically
- Horizontally
Vertically scaling resources means scaling up, in which you generally increase the processor power or the RAM. Horizontally scaling resources means scaling out, in which a developer would increase the number of servers or clusters.
Ideally, a mix of both of the resources will be beneficial for business, as the scaling should solely depend on the circumstances.
Sometimes having a group of many small servers shall suit the scenario and might be the cost-effective approach. Whereas at other times, it is much better to just employ one big processor.
If the need to scale down ever arises, one can always cut down on power or move to smaller machines.
The allocation of the resource should only depend on the case and the developer, however, it should fit in both the scope and the budget of the project.
What Else Is Necessary For Scalable Systems?
Now that the concept of the load is clear to everyone, let’s move on. The other extremely important factor for scalable applications is consistency.
The consistency in the system usually refers to the ability of the database to adapt to the load. Taking the same example forward, what if two customers order 1000 articles of the same item? And there are only 1500 articles in stock? In that case, whichever customer checks out first gets the complete order and the other one will be notified of the available items in stock.
Now, the issue is that the database sometimes might not be able to decrement such a huge number at once. This sort of circumstance can cause the business a huge loss.
Therefore, developers need to keep every scenario in mind while building applications.
Final Thoughts
As the web is getting bigger and bigger each day, it is smart to be more thoughtful of your career as a web or a mobile developer.
However, it is not easy to produce a system that can scale smoothly under variable loads. And that is exactly why you should consider getting professional at it. The sea of developers is increasing at such a rapid speed, that anyone who doesn’t keep up with the technologies will be lost.
With the cloud market such as Microsoft Azure, Google, and AWS taking over the market, the network is only getting much bigger.
Gone are the times when only a bunch of applications needed to be scalable, now scalability is not a luxury but a need of the hour.
Want to explore your interest in app or web development career then join our web development bootcamp to get started.