Building Scalable Web Sites

by Henderson, Cal

• ISBN13: 9780596102357
• ISBN10: 0596102356
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2006-05-30
• Publisher: Oreilly & Associates Inc

Summary

This book is a front-to-back look at Web 2.0 applications, focusing on architecture and implementation. Using Ajax for web sites is all the rage, but they lack a scalable architecture. Readers will learn how to take what some refer to as the "poor man's web technologies" - Linux, Apache, MySQL, and PHP or other scripting languages - and scale them to compete with established "store bought" enterprise web technologies. The author led the Flickr software development team and uses real world examples to explain how to design and build Ajax-style client-like applications on the Web with XMLHttpRequest - without compromising web site performance. "Building Scalable Web Sites" goes beyond the standard Ajax tricks and explains how to realise the cost and performance benefits of asynchronous XML communication. The book details proven methods for scaling Web 2.0 applications to millions of users.

Table of Contents

Preface	ix
Introduction	1	(5)
What Is a Web Application?	1	(1)
How Do You Build Web Applications?	2	(1)
What Is Architecture?	3	(1)
How Do I Get Started?	4	(2)
Web Application Architecture	6	(21)
Layered Software Architecture	6	(3)
Layered Technologies	9	(2)
Software Interface Design	11	(3)
Getting from A to B	14	(1)
The Software/Hardware Divide	15	(1)
Hardware Platforms	16	(3)
Hardware Platform Growth	19	(3)
Hardware Redundancy	22	(1)
Networking	23	(2)
Languages, Technologies, and Databases	25	(2)
Development Environments	27	(42)
The Three Rules	27	(1)
Use Source Control	28	(18)
One-Step Build	46	(9)
Issue Tracking	55	(8)
Scaling the Development Model	63	(1)
Coding Standards	64	(2)
Testing	66	(3)
i18n, L10n, and Unicode	69	(21)
Internationalization and Localization	70	(3)
Unicode in a Nutshell	73	(6)
The UTF-8 Encoding	79	(1)
UTF-8 Web Applications	80	(2)
Using UTF-8 with PHP	82	(1)
Using UTF-8 with Other Languages	83	(1)
Using UTF-8 with MySQL	84	(1)
Using UTF-8 with Email	85	(2)
Using UTF-8 with JavaScript	87	(2)
Using UTF-8 with APIs	89	(1)
Data Integrity and Security	90	(27)
Data Integrity Policies	90	(2)
Good, Valid, and Invalid	92	(1)
Filtering UTF-8	93	(5)
Filtering Control Characters	98	(1)
Filtering HTML	99	(3)
Cross-Site Scripting (XSS)	102	(8)
SQL Injection Attacks	110	(7)
Email	117	(19)
Receiving Email	117	(2)
Injecting Email into Your Application	119	(2)
The MIME Format	121	(2)
Parsing Simple MIME Emails	123	(1)
Parsing UU Encoded Attachments	124	(1)
TNEF Attachments	125	(2)
Wireless Carriers Hate You	127	(3)
Character Sets and Encodings	130	(2)
Recognizing Your Users	132	(2)
Unit Testing	134	(2)
Remote Services	136	(26)
Remote Services Club	136	(1)
Sockets	137	(3)
Using HTTP	140	(5)
Remote Services Redundancy	145	(4)
Asynchronous Systems	149	(4)
Exchanging XML	153	(4)
Lightweight Protocols	157	(5)
Bottlenecks	162	(40)
Identifying Bottlenecks	162	(6)
CPU Usage	168	(7)
I/O	175	(10)
Memory and Swap	185	(3)
External Services and Black Boxes	188	(1)
Databases	188	(14)
Scaling Web Applications	202	(55)
The Scaling Myth	202	(9)
Scaling the Network	211	(1)
Scaling PHP	212	(2)
Load Balancing	214	(13)
Scaling MySQL	227	(5)
MySQL Replication	232	(8)
Database Partitioning	240	(4)
Scaling Large Database	244	(2)
Scaling Storage	246	(7)
Caching	253	(3)
Scaling in a Nutshell	256	(1)
Statistics, Monitoring, and Alerting	257	(31)
Tracking Web Statistics	257	(10)
Application Monitoring	267	(18)
Alerting	285	(3)
APIs	288	(35)
Data Feeds	288	(12)
Mobile Content	300	(4)
Web Services	304	(3)
API Transports	307	(8)
API Abuse	315	(3)
Authentication	318	(3)
The Future	321	(2)
Index	323