It’s the ability of the server and the database to handle the load for a given the number of users at a time. Of course, the infra parameters are critical. I won’t complicate the discussion here. :-)
It is usually a transient data store that will be integrated on front end interface or an application. It will hold all the application data, user inputs, structured and raw (unprocessed) or processed data. It is normally not used as a permanent data store for performance reasons. This is like a temporary holding place before all of them are passed to the back end server for ETL/ELT en route to a database.
To improve the user performance, it is a normal practice to leverage the transient data store to hold a certain amount of processed data from the back end database. A script will run to keep these in sync. One needs to be careful as storing too much information permanently will negatively affect the site.
I am over simplifying here. However, a site like this may not be following this course at all.
Furthermore, the cloud has brought a lot of sweeping changes to the technology landscape bringing a lot of performance efficiencies along the way.
Am sure freeflarum would be on one of the clouds. It all depends on their finances, the number of sites, total users, concurrent users and the budget earmarked for the servers. :-)
It’s too much of a faff to keep their servers running
securely. I am sure Dave spends a decent amount of time to keep our forum running.
I don’t do any more technical architecture / technical solution design in my daily job. So, I am not keeping track of the technical advances for my work. :-)
