Imagine having tens of millions, or just millions users - all of them with their records, history, targeted ads data. Or some mail provider that stores attachments in a database. Or a file sharing service like those you and I know. That's a plenty of information to manage. Add an overhead, and it's easy to overfill even the biggest database.
Also I agree with you that bad design might be a concern. Of course there's no big database that couldn't get on a "purge" diet.
Now seems to me we might have a problem with querying such a big bucket of random data. Imagine a query taking months to complete. We're gonna be there in another ten years.
And then we lose the capacity to make electricity. And we can use our CDs, DVDs, let alone magnetic media to... well, dig trenches.
Those pesky petabytes of data are going to doom us.
Too Bad Most of that is Due to Poor... (Score:2, Insightful)
... DB design and old data that should be purged. Color me unimpressed.
Effect of the scale (Score:2, Insightful)
Imagine having tens of millions, or just millions users - all of them with their records, history, targeted ads data. Or some mail provider that stores attachments in a database. Or a file sharing service like those you and I know. That's a plenty of information to manage. Add an overhead, and it's easy to overfill even the biggest database.
Also I agree with you that bad design might be a concern. Of course there's no big database that couldn't get on a "purge" diet.
Now seems to me we might have a problem with querying such a big bucket of random data. Imagine a query taking months to complete. We're gonna be there in another ten years.
And then we lose the capacity to make electricity. And we can use our CDs, DVDs, let alone magnetic media to... well, dig trenches.
Those pesky petabytes of data are going to doom us.