Fascinating glimpse into the inner workings of extreme-scale computing and the role of key/value servers

If you wonder what a key/value server is and why they are increasingly important, watch this video. It also provides insight into extreme-scale computing environments from the perspective of a brilliant engineer.

The video is here: infoq.com: Evolving the Key/Value Programming Model to a Higher Level

The slides are unfortunately off-screen in the video, but they can be found here: jaoo.dk: Evolving the Key/Value Programming Model to a Higher Level

As a student who has just taken her first database course, I found the beginning of the video interesting where he runs through the distinctions between standard databases and key/value servers.

But the real punch of this video, IMHO, occurs near the end at 52’30” in response to an audience member’s question, where he gives the most amazing nutshell explanation about what the key/value server is doing relative to the traditional database approach and he describes how and why key/value storage is essential for extreme-scale computing such as web search engines.

This video provides a fascinating glimpse into the inner workings of some of the mega-scale operations of the Internet that are utilized by millions of people every day.