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Recalculating ranks for everyone every time the score changes seems like a difficult task no matter how you approach it. I don't think you really need that for

Recalculating ranks for everyone every time the score changes seems like a difficult task no matter how you approach it. I don't think you really need that for most use cases though. Some reasonable simplifications I've seen are don't rank anyone below a certain cutoff score, only calculate rankings periodically, or only calculate rankings for a subset of the data.

sbov 15y ago
But if there is a straightforward solution that allows you to not make these concessions and it can do so with great performance, I'm not sure how you can continue to claim that relational databases are the right tool for this job. Sure, it can do it, but it seems like something else does it better.
- ameasure 15y ago
  You're right, I don't have much of an argument for relational databases here. I am concerned about the complexity of this approach though and I don't think the concessions we're doing away with are that terrible. How meaningful is it to be rank 5623 vs. rank 5249, or even rank 2519? I don't think people can make much sense of ranks beyond 100, but maybe I'm wrong. I would rather break rankings into smaller groups. Which is more interesting, being ranked 23,528 worldwide, or being the town champion? I think the latter is much more meaningful to a person.
  - latch 15y ago
    limiting ranks (to 5000 for most games and 1000 for a few particular ones) is the concession we ended up doing in v1. When we introduced the change, no one complained (or has since) - our developers have been great. As for complexity. The complexity of learning is a noop as far as I'm concerned. Duplicate data? Not concerned. Managing 2 stores...slightly concerning. Agreed. Maintenance? The entire change is largely encapsulated in a new ~30 line Rank class. Sure, I'd rather not have that extra code. I hadn't considered rank-groups (thanks for the idea though!). I'll definitely give that more thought. Nonetheless, I think I rather have the raw data available and accessible (in addition to any additional abstraction). I don't like making decision for the developers. Maybe 100 ranks isn't enough for them (I've seen them do some pretty creative stuff with the bit of data we're collecting already).

sbov 15y ago

But if there is a straightforward solution that allows you to not make these concessions and it can do so with great performance, I'm not sure how you can continue to claim that relational databases are the right tool for this job. Sure, it can do it, but it seems like something else does it better.

ameasure 15y ago
You're right, I don't have much of an argument for relational databases here. I am concerned about the complexity of this approach though and I don't think the concessions we're doing away with are that terrible. How meaningful is it to be rank 5623 vs. rank 5249, or even rank 2519? I don't think people can make much sense of ranks beyond 100, but maybe I'm wrong. I would rather break rankings into smaller groups. Which is more interesting, being ranked 23,528 worldwide, or being the town champion? I think the latter is much more meaningful to a person.
- latch 15y ago
  limiting ranks (to 5000 for most games and 1000 for a few particular ones) is the concession we ended up doing in v1. When we introduced the change, no one complained (or has since) - our developers have been great. As for complexity. The complexity of learning is a noop as far as I'm concerned. Duplicate data? Not concerned. Managing 2 stores...slightly concerning. Agreed. Maintenance? The entire change is largely encapsulated in a new ~30 line Rank class. Sure, I'd rather not have that extra code. I hadn't considered rank-groups (thanks for the idea though!). I'll definitely give that more thought. Nonetheless, I think I rather have the raw data available and accessible (in addition to any additional abstraction). I don't like making decision for the developers. Maybe 100 ranks isn't enough for them (I've seen them do some pretty creative stuff with the bit of data we're collecting already).