How does IMDG solve the Scalability problem?

WebSphere eXreme Scale - WXS is a IMDG - In Memory Data Grid implementation

Fundamentals: How does IMDG solve the Scalability problem?

Understanding Scalability:

In understanding the scalability challenge addressed by WebSphere eXtreme

Scale, let us first define and understand scalability.

Wikipedia defines scalability as a "desirable property of a system, a network, or a process, which indicates its ability to either handle growing amounts of work in a graceful manner, or to be readily enlarged. For example, it can refer to the capability of a system to increase total throughput under an increased load when resources (typically hardware) are added."

· Scalability in a system is about the ability to do more, whether it is processing more data or handling more traffic, resulting in higher transactions

· scalability poses great challenges to database and transaction systems

· An increase in data can expose demand constraints on back-end database servers

· This can be a very expensive and short term approach to solving the problem of processing ever growing data and transactions

At some point, either due to practical, fiscal or physical limits, enterprises are unable to continue to "scale out" by simply adding hardware. The progressive approach then adopted is to "scale out" by adding additional database servers and using a high speed connection between the database servers to provide a fabric of database servers. This approach while viable, poses some challenges around keeping the databases servers synchronized. It is important to ensure that the databases are kept in sync for data integrity and crash recovery.

Solution: In Memory Data Grid or IBMs WebSphere eXtreme Scale

WebSphere eXtreme Scale compliments the database layer to provide a fault tolerant, highly available and scalable data layer that addresses the growing concern around the data and eventually the business.

· Scalability is never an IT problem alone. It directly impacts the business applications and the business unit that owns the applications.

· Scalability is treated as a competitive advantage.

· The applications that are scalable can easily accommodate growth and aid

The business functions in analysis and business development.

WebSphere eXtreme Scale provides a set of interconnected java processes that holds the data in memory, thereby acting as shock absorbers to the back end databases. This not only enabled faster data access, as the data is accessed from memory, but also reduces the stress on database.

more on this.....later.