When I originally learned about Data Gravity via David Linthicum’s excellent podcasts, a key architecture point that stuck in my mind was: your application needs to be close to its (interactive) data sources. (Data Gravity has since picked up a wider yet less useful definition as more applications cluster together in a “data galaxy” to be close enough for large amounts of data to be able to interact.) Why? Every interaction with a database has communication (network time) overhead. Most applications are built with their servers and database on the same LAN / subnet / vnet – usually in close physical proximity, specifically so that time is minimized. Every hub/switch/router adds time to the request, so while a request may pay 10ms when it’s local, add time per “hop”. Application performance and tolerances are implicitly built around that response overhead. If data takes too long to return, the developers will likely adjust their code to do bigger queries, wider joins, etc. But wha
Enough hype! Real ROI - Let's put these technologies to work!