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eBay infrastructure

Wednesday, November 1, 2006

There’s an article on eWeek.com about the storage requirements of eBay.com. It’s mostly large number willy waving, but this quote from the third page caught my eye:

eBay’s application servers, according to Strong:

* use monolithic two-tier architecture
* boast 3.3 million line C++ ISAPI DLL (150MB binary)
* have hundreds of developers, all working on the same code
* are hitting compiler limits on number of methods per class.

Now, I could be wrong, but the last three points don’t really strike me as much to be proud of, not to mention possibly inaccurate in the case of the first two.

In other news, this morning I did something that some people might find a little odd. I cleaned my bike.

Truly, I am entering into the realm of the unwell.

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4 Responses to “eBay infrastructure”


  1. Pierre Says:

    You cleaned your bike? Why? Had it stopped working? ;)

    : P

  2. Alex Says:

    I think I read somewhere that dirt can add a surprising amount of weight to a bike and was getting concerned.

  3. Sam Says:

    are you suggesting that some classes need cleaning up on e-bay’s servers

  4. Alex Says:

    Well, yes. I mean, if they are hitting compiler limits on the number of methods per class then those classes are probably trying to do too much and should be broken down into small areas of functionality.

    This will also make them easier to debug and maintain - which is one of the reasons to use OO methodologies in the first place, no?

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