Database sharding unraveled - part I : Lifescaler. Scalability Principles. At the simplest level, scalability is about doing more of something.
This could be responding to more user requests, executing more work or handling more data. While designing software has its complexities, making that software capable of doing lots of work presents its own set of problems. This article presents some principles and guidelines for building scalable software systems. 1. Decrease processing time.