I don’t have Amazon scalability issues (and neither do you). Yet, this Q&A with Amazon’s CTO Werner Vogels is one of the most relevant articles I read this week. I contains a lot of useful advise, for companies and projects of any size.
Don’t read it looking for which technologies Amazon uses. That’s irrelevant. Look at how they make those decisions. That, my friend, applies to you as well.
Here’s a quote to wet your appetite:
JG But if things are in XSD, then these tools work much better than if they don’t have XSD. So the question I have is, have you done anything so that the tools dovetail with your standards?
WV I think part of the chaotic nature—the emerging nature—of Amazon’s platform is that there are many tools available, and we try not to impose too many constraints on our engineers. We provide incentives for some things, such as integration with the monitoring system and other infrastructure tools. But for the rest, we allow teams to function as independently as possible. Developers are like artists; they produce their best work if they have the freedom to do so, but they need good tools. As a result of this principle, we have many support tools that are of a self-help nature. The support environment around the service development should never get in the way of the development itself.
Not a straight answer, but that’s ok. We all want to know if Amazon uses XSD or not so we can copy them without having to make up our own mind. That’s the easy cop out. What you really want is a support environment that doesn’t get in the way of development itself. Free thinking does that.
Also, check out Werner’s response to the REST fanatics, who are trying to use Amazon to prove a point.