you're probably right though it astounds me that this relationship would be bidirectional eg: web servers can make requests to individual stores. Security impl

you're probably right though it astounds me that this relationship would be bidirectional eg: web servers can make requests to individual stores. Security implications aside if it was engineered that way it would make for highly variable response times and diminished reliability: not only would you have to make 50+ queries but those queries would have to be across a wan instead of being colocated.