It is a dark and gloomy Wednesday night. Colin steps out of his beat-up Corolla, with the rain relentlessly (but unsuccessfully) trying to dissolve his leather

It is a dark and gloomy Wednesday night. Colin steps out of his beat-up Corolla, with the rain relentlessly (but unsuccessfully) trying to dissolve his leather jacket. He's getting close to 30 and is always telling his friends that he will have a weekend house with a koi pond in the backyard some day, but they laugh in response -- who cares about fish these days? Things are getting complicated at work. The app he's been working on for the past few months turned out to be a hit, new subscribers are appearing at every moment; in short, business is booming! They even got a column in the local newspaper, getting high praise for both form and functionality. A problem presents itself when too many people are trying to use the app at the same time - it looks like the database software can not keep up with the demands of this immense crowd. An impromptu meeting is held, and Colin is tasked with coming up with a solution. Getting closer to the front door, he thinks to himself, "How can we handle this incredible volume of traffic when it reaches the database cluster?", but his thoughts soon drift off again.