What does "scalability" mean?

scalability
Patto picture Patto · Feb 23, 2012 · Viewed 72.8k times · Source

I read many articles comparing programming languages.

There is a word that comes often: scalability. I actually tried to look for a simple and clear explanation, but haven't found anything.

Can you explain what the scalability term means?

Answer

Furbeenator picture Furbeenator · Feb 23, 2012

Scalability is the ability of a program to scale. For example, if you can do something on a small database (say less than 1000 records), a program that is highly scalable would work well on a small set as well as working well on a large set (say millions, or billions of records).

Like gap said, it would have a linear growth of resource requirements. Look up Big-O notation for more details about how programs can require more computation the larger the data input gets. Something parabolic like Big-O(x^2) is far less efficient with large x inputs than something linear like Big-O(x).

Related questions

Difference between scaling horizontally and vertically for databases

I have come across many NoSQL databases and SQL databases. There are varying parameters to measure the strength and weaknesses of these databases and scalability is one of them. What is the difference between horizontally and vertically scaling these databases?

Read More
Does Django scale?

I'm building a web application with Django. The reasons I chose Django were: I wanted to work with free/open-source tools. I like Python and feel it's a long-term language, whereas regarding Ruby I wasn't sure, and PHP seemed like …

Read More
A beginner's guide to SQL database design

Do you know a good source to learn how to design SQL solutions? Beyond the basic language syntax, I'm looking for something to help me understand: What tables to build and how to link them How to design for different …

Read More