Friendfeed using Mysql for Schema-less data

Bret has a nice little article talking about why most people should still stick with known, tested database engines even if the data stored is not relational. Friendfeed uses a simple table to keep attribute value pairs and separate tables to keep indexes for each attribute which needs indexing.

The design is very simple and reasonable, and makes an effective argument against using cloud DB (or something like CouchDB) when you can get away with what you need with true and tested engines.

Related posts:

1. Mysql on HDFS
2. Versioning data in S3 on AWS
3. Mysql Cluster
4. Scalability Stories (15th Sept) Mysql Proxy, Cluster Fire System, Facebook apps and Twitter
5. Google patents Map reduce “System and method for efficient large-scale data processing”