Magnus Manske wrote:
Neil Harris wrote:
Perhaps the rating code could be turned on only for admins, or users with usernames beginning with 'E' to 'J', or only during non-busy hours... or automatically turned off if load rises over a pre-set limit?
Or perhaps just turned on for a few hours one weekend, to see what the effect on load really is?
Jimbo's plan calls for everyone being able to rate, including not-logged-in users. This will be for test purposes only; the ratings from the test phase will be deleted again, once the statistics people got their hands on it and can hopefully tell us how to fine-tune the rating process.
The "performance hog myth" dates back to the very first version. I have worked on the problematic parts and IMHO they should be good. I can't be certain without real testing, though. However, I doubt it will degrade performance in the initial phase; if there's a problem, it will most likely show once there are at least a few hundred thousand ratings. There will be many write/delete queries on the table, which might lead to table locks; this might be countered with low priority queries, though.
Magnus
For vote acquisition, the entries might as well be split across multiple tables to spread the locking load, if locking is a real problem, and the votes then merged in (daily?) batch operations. There's no real need for the system to give real-time results.
-- Neil