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John James Jacoby edited this page Jun 19, 2024 · 1 revision

What can I do with LudicrousDB that I can't do with WPDB?

WordPress.org, the most complex LudicrousDB installation, manages millions of tables spanning thousands of databases. Dynamic configuration logic allows LudicrousDB to compute the location of tables by querying a central database. Custom scripts constantly balance database server resources by migrating tables and updating their locations in the central database.

Stretch your imagination. You could create a dynamic configuration using persistent caching to gather intelligence about the state of the network. The only constant is the name of the configuration file. The rest, as they say, is PHP.

How does LudicrousDB support replication?

LudicrousDB does not provide replication services. That is done by configuring MySQL servers for replication. LudicrousDB can then be configured to use these servers appropriately, e.g. by connecting to primary servers to perform write queries.

How does LudicrousDB support load balancing?

LudicrousDB randomly selects database connections from priority groups that you configure. The most advantageous connections are tried first. Thus you can optimize your configuration for network topology, hardware capability, or any other scheme you invent.

How does LudicrousDB support failover?

Failover describes how LudicrousDB deals with connection failures. When LudicrousDB fails to connect to one database, it tries to connect to another database that holds the same data. If replication hasn't been set up, LudicrousDB tries reconnecting a few times before giving up.

How does LudicrousDB support partitioning?

LudicrousDB allows tables to be placed in arbitrary databases. It can use callbacks you write to compute the appropriate database for a given query. Thus you can partition your site's data according to your own scheme and configure LudicrousDB accordingly.

Is there any advantage to using LudicrousDB with just one database server?

None that has been measured. LudicrousDB does at least try again before giving up connecting, so it might help in cases where the web server is momentarily unable to connect to the database server.

One way LudicrousDB differs from WPDB is that LudicrousDB does not attempt to connect to a database until a query is made. Thus a site with sufficiently aggressive persistent caching could remain read-only accessible despite the database becoming unreachable.

What if all database servers for a dataset go down?

Since LudicrousDB attempts a connection only when a query is made, your WordPress installation will not kill the site with a database error, but will let the code decide what to do next on an unsuccessful query. If you want to do something different, like setting a custom error page or kill the site, you need to define the 'db_connection_error' callback in your db-config.php.