<div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;">as for load balancing, the best solution would be to use the clustering<br>functionnalities of the used database server.
<br><br>for instance, on Mysql, see<br><br><a href="http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.1/en/mysql-cluster.html">http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.1/en/mysql-cluster.html</a></blockquote><div><br>Doing clustering this way requires a significant amount of memory (as the whole DB has to fit in the server's RAM).
<br><br>The most scalable option for MySQL is replication (<a href="http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.1/en/replication.html">http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.1/en/replication.html</a>) - I've been using it for years, I now have 20 servers in a replication string without a glinch. It's very scalable at the end.
<br><br>Mac<br></div></div>