# Re: scalability of table lookup

Stu Weibel (weibel@oclc.org)
Tue, 8 Jun 93 08:27:54 EDT

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    Date: Tue, 8 Jun 93 08:27:54 EDT

    From: weibel@oclc.org (Stu Weibel)

    Message-Id: <9306081227.AA27681@ora.rsch.oclc.org>

    To: uri@bunyip.com

    Subject: Re: scalability of table lookup

Tim writes:

> If I understand you correctly, you are saying that, given an
> arbitrary unstructured key, that this system can find 1 out of
> 500 million items, in around 5 milliseconds? That is a useful
> service.

We sustain searches at a peak rate of 200/sec in a database of 28
million records, each of which has holding information linking that
record to an aggregate of 500 million items (largely books and
periodicals). This is certainly not an upper limit on supportable
search rates. We are a large transaction processor, but there are
many larger.
Ed writes:

> If, given a URN, you can turn it into a string of URL's in .5 second that
> request is still probably less than half way timewise to getting something
> good for the user.

Is the point of UR*s to provide instantaneous access to all
resources under all conceivable circumstances, or is it to provide a
reliable way to identify and retrieve a resource across time in a
changing environment (both are of obvious value)?

I take it Ed's concern that (.5 sec x2) may be too slow is based on
the requirements of Mosaic and similar systems that will try and
service immediate demands for linked objects distributed across the
net?

Is it possible that these two problems are sufficiently different
that their solutions should be different (or at least, partitioned)?

stu

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