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Ellington, which is a Django based CMS runs the Washington Post web site: http://www.ellingtoncms.com/ http://www.ellingtoncms.com/ I don't have doubts about D

Ellington, which is a Django based CMS runs the Washington Post web site: http://www.ellingtoncms.com/ http://www.ellingtoncms.com/ I don't have doubts about Django scaling. The caching framework is really cool. I did a test a couple of weeks ago, and I got a 10x performance boost, simply by sprinkling 3-4 lines of caching code to my site. That was justing the local memory caching: http://docs.djangoproject.com/en/1.0/topics/cache/#local-memory-caching http://docs.djangoproject.com/en/1.0/topics/cache/#local-mem... I'd imagine that using a caching back end like memcache would probably give another huge performance boost. It's really pretty straight-forward and usable out of the box.

wensing 18y ago
If you're using nginx, you can install the memcache module, which lets you speak directly to memcache and bypass Django's CacheMiddleware altogether.
zepolen 18y ago
Caching != Scaling
- caudicus 18y ago
  So what does exactly equal scaling then? I'm not disagreeing that scaling isn't only caching, but it's often a component just like anything else. Caching often helps scaling, as do multiple databases, working out bottlenecks in code...whatever else.
  - zepolen 18y ago
    Scaling = Increasing capacity indefinitely by adding more nodes. Caching is not scaling because by definition, it depends on a backend to provide it data. If the backend is a database then sure, you can increase capacity by ~10x (assuming a ~90% cache hit rate), but after that, throwing more caching nodes at the problem won't do a thing if your database itself isn't scalable. All a cache does is increase speed at decreased costs, but it is not in itself a scaling solution.
adrianh 18y ago
Ellington does not run the entire Washington Post site. A number of specific applications on washingtonpost.com use Django (e.g., projects.washingtonpost.com/congress), but the main site (articles, columns, etc.) does not use Django. Signed, the guy who introduced Django to washingtonpost.com

wensing 18y ago

If you're using nginx, you can install the memcache module, which lets you speak directly to memcache and bypass Django's CacheMiddleware altogether.

zepolen 18y ago

Caching != Scaling

caudicus 18y ago
So what does exactly equal scaling then? I'm not disagreeing that scaling isn't only caching, but it's often a component just like anything else. Caching often helps scaling, as do multiple databases, working out bottlenecks in code...whatever else.
- zepolen 18y ago
  Scaling = Increasing capacity indefinitely by adding more nodes. Caching is not scaling because by definition, it depends on a backend to provide it data. If the backend is a database then sure, you can increase capacity by ~10x (assuming a ~90% cache hit rate), but after that, throwing more caching nodes at the problem won't do a thing if your database itself isn't scalable. All a cache does is increase speed at decreased costs, but it is not in itself a scaling solution.

adrianh 18y ago

Ellington does not run the entire Washington Post site. A number of specific applications on washingtonpost.com use Django (e.g., projects.washingtonpost.com/congress), but the main site (articles, columns, etc.) does not use Django. Signed, the guy who introduced Django to washingtonpost.com