A scalable web application is an app designed by a developer and which size will be scaled later. So before starting building a scalable web application, a developer has to be knowledgeable about his data currently and in the future. That means he should know how consumers will actually use the app. This is the first great step before planning to scale. Basically, projection is the key and without that, it is impossible to make plans for scaling.
How to build a scalable web application
First of all, building and operating a scalable application includes a primitive level and the scalability one. The primitive one is just about connecting users with remote resources via the internet. You can use only one server for this step. But the part that makes it scalable is that access to used resources or the resources are now distributed across multiple servers.
Before starting coding it is important to take time to plan ahead. Here are the key principles that influence the design of large-scale web systems:
- Availability: The uptime of a website is critical to the reputation and functionality of a company. For some of the larger online retail sites, being unavailable for even minutes can result in thousands or millions of dollars in lost revenue, so the best thing to do is to design a system constantly available and resilient to failure.
- Performance: Website performance is important for most sites. Search engine rankings, and the speed of a website affects usage and user satisfaction. So it is important to create a system optimized for low latency and fast responses.
- Reliability: Users need to know that if there is data stored in the system, it will persist and can be relied on.
- Scalability: this principles just refers to size
- Manageability: for this principle it is important to consider the ease of understanding problems and diagnosing when they occur, ease of making modifications and how simple the system is to operate.
- Cost: it is a very important factor. It includes software and hardware costs but also fees needed to deploy and maintain the system.
Each principle above provides the basis for decisions in designing a scalable web application. After finding out the users need for the app and how it will operate now and in the future, it is simpler to know how to start. Before deploying, the developer should be knowledgeable about his current and future app data. He should anticipate scale right from the start and develop realistic strategy with proven resources.
But note that you won’t care about all these things if you are not a developer and you want an app for your company or organization. There are professional developers like those of Razor Theory who know their job and really know how to go through all these processes to provide a fully functional app.