Four short links: 31 July 2020
SQL Migration, Hypertext Framework, Scaling RDBMS, and Account Recovery
- Migrating a 40TB SQL Server Database — A horror story to tell around the campfire. I was struck by the observation in this Hacker News comment that It’s typical that a log will be accessed zero times. Collecting, aggregating, and indexing logs is usually a mistake made by people who aren’t clear on the use case for the logs.
- Hyperapp — an ultra-lightweight Virtual DOM, highly-optimized diff algorithm, and state management library obsessed with minimalism.
- Scaling Relational Databases — Update the database; scale vertically; leverage application code; use efficient data types; data normalization and denormalization; precompute data; leverage materialized views; use proper indexes; leverage the execution plan for query optimization; choose correct transaction isolation level; bulk INSERTs and UPDATEs; compress data for storage; make ALTER TABLEs work; manage concurrent connections; add read replicas; disk partitioning; use specialized extensions; sharding; don’t store everything in one table; process data outside the SQL database; be aware of the limitations of managed SQL databases.
- Secrets, Lies, and Account Recovery: Lessons from the Use of Personal Knowledge Questions at Google — We conclude that it appears next to impossible to find secret questions that are both secure and memorable. Secret questions continue have some use when combined with other signals, but they should not be used alone and best practice should favor more reliable alternatives.
