[thelist] What is "scalability"?

[Frank]

My business partner asked me an interesting question:

"What does 'scalable' mean?

I referred to an indicator of scalability as being the ability to handle
traffic loads based on the hardware, not the software. In other words, the
app can handle 100 or 100 million hits a day. The database might be served
from several machines, the web pages from several more, with one or more
parcelling out the commands; the ability to cluster. Scalability is the
ability spread your app across an a growing number of machines.

Now comes a couple other subjective questions:

What makes a an solution "Enterprise Level"?

What are some metrics that one could use to prove such a level?




--
Frank Marion <frank at frankmarion.com>      Tel: 416 825 7488