The architecture of MySQL-powered applications is one of my favorite topics to talk about. It’s a very important topic because if you do not get the architecture right then you’re very likely to fail with your project – either from the standpoint of failing with performance, high availability or security requirements… or failing to deliver on time and at the planned cost.

It’s also a great topic because there is so much knowledge available these days about MySQL-powered applications. MySQL has been around for a rather long time compared with many other solutions – and now we know what architectures have enabled people to build successful MySQL-powered applications and grow them to hundreds of millions of users as well as what applications did not work out.

This level of maturity really allows us to essentially take “off-the-shelf” MySQL architectures that can be used to build very …