Software Good, Investment Bad Posted: 4/9/2009

Of all possible businesses, I think the Software Business is one of the best. If managed properly, the profit margins can be quite large. The software business is treacherous and risky, but it's a challenge I relish.

I also think that seeking investment capital is generally a bad idea, especially for the software business. No one will give you capital when you really need it, which is early on, when all you have are ideas and plans.  Investors only want to invest when it's a sure thing.  In a normal business, this makes more sense, since large investments are still needed to move the business forward. In the software business however, the investment is in the beginning.  After the product is ready to sell, given that retail brick and mortar sales are passe, there is much less of a need for further investment. At that point, the product is either cash flow positive, or it isn't.  If so, it's a bad idea to sell it at that point.

Reference: Small is beautiful for Web 2.0 start-ups, 37Signals, Signal vs. Noise

Tech Interviews Posted: 1/15/2009

I think the folks doing tech interviews focus too much on what people know versus what people can do.  I learned this lesson in 97 when I was interviewing people for a C++ position with ARINC.  I devised a complex set of C++ questions to screen people.  It was helpful in that I was able to reject some folks who simply made up answers to every question.  On the other hand, I fully endorsed someone who answered every question correctly.  He turned out to be a very poor choice and was not very effective.

Here is another football analogy that exaggerates to make the point:

Style	Knowledge Orientation	Accomplishment Orientation
Resume Item	Played Football using an all leather ball	Made key plays to help my team win the AFC championship
Resume Item	Am familiar with numerous NFL stadiums	Helped my team win the super bowl
Tech Screen Question	At Giant Stadium, when you come out of the locker room, do you turn right or left to head to the field?	When you played for the Ravens, what was your major accomplishment?

I have heard many tech interview questions that sound more like the Giant Stadium question.  My point is that people who have accomplished things in the past are likely to be able to do so again.  Some attributes that I would think are important (in order of importance):

1. Accomplishment history
2. Team player – people skills
3. Integrity - probe to ensure that resume is true
4. Experience Level
5. Attitude (positive / negative)
6. Basic knowledge check

I think wisdom is more important than technology.   I think engineering judgement is more important than detailed API knowledge.  I think accomplishment is more important than knowledge.  That said, technology, knowledge and API details are still important.

Reference: Scott Hanselman

SQLite, Local Database Posted: 1/14/2009

While struggling with a Mimer trigger, the question was asked: What about SQL Svr 2005 Express?

Well, the problem is that SQL Server 2005 has a dependency on .NET.  This makes the deployment problem associated with SQL Server even worse.  Another problem is that we would lose cross platform possibility.  Similarly, Cloudscape has a dependency on Java. 

Mimer seemed like a good choice.  We implemented this decision.  However, the performance is not very good, compared to SQL Server.

SQLite may be a better choice.  The list of features not supported seems less problematic than it once did.

Transactions are atomic, consistent, isolated, and durable (ACID) even after system crashes and power failures.

Zero-configuration - no setup or administration needed.

Implements most of SQL92. (Features not supported)

A complete database is stored in a single cross-platform disk file.

Supports terabyte-sized databases and gigabyte-sized strings and blobs. (See limits.html.)

Small code footprint: less than 275KiB fully configured or less than 200KiB with optional features omitted.

Faster than popular client/server database engines for most common operations.

Simple, easy to use API.

Written in ANSI-C. TCL bindings included. Bindings for dozens of other languages available separately.

Well-commented source code with over 99% statement test coverage.

Available as a single ANSI-C source-code file that you can easily drop into another project.

Self-contained: no external dependencies.

Cross-platform: Linux (unix), MacOSX, OS/2, Win32 and WinCE are supported out of the box. Easy to port to other systems.

Sources are in the public domain. Use for any purpose.

Reference: SQL Lite, ADO.NET SQL Lite, Cloudscape, SQLite Membership, Role, and Profile Providers SQLite CRecordSet, Upgrade framework for SQLite databases

Data Grid Comparison Posted: 9/3/2008


I once did some research into third party grid components.  This kind of information becomes obsolete pretty quick. 

Feature	Description	WebGrid.NET	telerik r.a.d	SyncFusion Essential Grid	ASPxGrid	ComponentOne WebGrid	Janus Web GridEx	Infragistics	FarPoint's Spread for Web Forms
Price	price per single developer and price per developer for 8 developers	783 @ 1,  391 @ 8	391 @ 1, 312 @ 8	583 @ 1, 583 @ 8	266 @ 1, 266 @ 8	909 @ 1, 837 @ 4 (suite)	374 @ 1, 160 @ 8	671 @ 1	899 @1
Platform	Technology platform that this grid targets	ASP.NET 1.1 & 2.0	ASP.NET 2.0	WinForms .NET 1.1	ASP.NET 1.1 & 2.0	ASP.NET 1.1 & 2.0	ASP.NET 1.1	ASP.NET 1.1 & 2.0	ASP.NET 1.1 & 2.0
AJAX Support	The ability to refresh portions of the screen	yes	yes, Asynchronous JavaScript with XMLHttpRequests (AJAX). This will make all Button, ImageButton, LinkButton controls, as well as any custom controls within r.a.d.grid to make AJAX callbacks instead of postbacks	n/a	?	no	?	With XML Paging the pages of the WebGrid can be changed without having the entire page posted back.  No changes to the object model are required. The XML paging is turned on automatically when the necessary preconditions have been met. (Browser/LoadOnDemand/AllowPaging are set accordingly)	You can add AJAX support to the FpSpread component by setting the EnableAjaxCall property.  Affects several features including expanding and collapsing child sheets in a hierarchical display, column sorting, inserting rows, paging, searching, filtering, and formula updates
Group Info	Visual representation of hierachical Group Columns in the GroupBox - Unscrolled header and footer	yes	?	?	can even allow your users to slice and dice their data with group header and footer summaries	?	The Control also presents a new MS Access like Filter Row which permits users to easily filter the data presented in the control	The Non-Repeated Headers feature also fixes the column headers’ vertical position, ensuring that the headers remain in view, even while scrolling through the Row Data.	no
Table Headers	a special row that appear in top of each Table's column headers. The table headers can contain Image and Caption that represent the context of displayed data.	yes	?	yes	?	no	?	?	yes
Column Headers	Column header text can be specified with alternate formatting.  The text should wrap.	yes, combination of Image and Text	yes	yes	yes	yes	yes	Images can now be displayed in column headers of the grid programmatically.  The image will be visible on the column header during normal rendering as well as when the column is in the GroupByBox area.  With this feature column headers of the grid can be arranged into several rows and also have the ability to span over multiple columns.	yes
Resizing	supports convenient client-side column and row resizing	yes	Column and Row Resizing - supports convenient client-side column and row resizing with features like: real-time resizing, resizing of the grid on column resizing, clipping of the cell content on column resizing	yes	?	don't think so	?	don't think so	yes
Freezing	Rows and Columns can be frozen, ie not subject to scrolling.	maybe, if header columns can be bound to data	?	yes	?	By setting the Fixed property of individual columns, you can partition C1WebGrid into nonscrolling and scrolling horizontal regions	?	Fixed columns were first introduced in 2005 Volume 2.  We have continued working on optimizing the Fixed Column design, and have made some huge performance gains.  Fixed Columns can now be used even when dealing with a large number of columns in your table.	yes, but only in IE 5.5 or greater
Sorting	The column headers can be clicked to perform sort operation.	yes	yes, Multi-Column Sorting - allows data sorting by several columns just like in Microsoft Excel	?	can sort against an unlimited number of columns by simply clicking individual column headers.  Don't think this means multi-column sorting.	When bound to a DataView object, C1WebGrid supports automatic sorting without code. Click a column header	probably	don't think so	yes, not multicolumn
Filtering	The ability to filter grid rows without executing a different SQL statement	yes, a special row that appear exactly below column headers allowing users to search or filter data based on the column	yes	?	?	use the grid's ItemCreated event to customize the contents of the paging area at the bottom of the grid.	FilterConditions, where you can define simple or complex conditions that can be used to filter, format, summarize or find rows which conform to the criteria. The new filter capabilities of the gridex control are so powerful that you could filter rows in a parent table depending on criteria met in a child table.	don't think so	yes
Scrolling	Scrolling with static headers. Use the mousewheel to scroll along the rows	yes	yes	yes, with flat scroll bars.  Accelerated Scrolling, Intelli-mouse Scrolling, Shared Scrollbars	?	Without writing any code, you can make C1WebGrid render data using scrollable <DIV> tags. Just set the HScrollBarStyle and VScrollBarStyle properties to control the display of horizontal and vertical scroll bars at run time	?	yes	yes
Group Rows	The rows that are result of grouping process, contains child rows in same group that can be expanded or collapsed	yes	Client-side expand/collapse in group-by mode - similarly to the hierarchical mode, r.a.d.grid can expand/collapse grouped items entirely client-side, eliminating the time-consuming postbacks for this common operation	no	built-in data grouping capabilities	You can group data, create trees with expandable and collapsible nodes, and automatically calculate data aggregates to be placed in the group header and footer rows	yes	Allow for Column Headers to be displayed once at the top of the grid, instead of in each GroupByRow.	no
Row Headers	Row headers are used to identify current selected row and can be clicked to select a row	yes	?	yes	?	no	?	probably	yes
Hierarchical data display	allows presentation of related DataSets as hierarchical structures of tables	yes, When Hierarchical data display is being used, the tree lines is shown to give a better understanding on the Hierarchical structure.	yes, A unique feature of the component is the ability to have more than one table in the same level of hierarchy	fully supports the display of both bound and unbound hierarchical data. Hierarchies can be nested to any level. Full support is provided for scrolling of nested data	?	You can implement expandable outline views by customizing individual columns at design time. This example provides a more compact view of the data by hiding the merged columns and using their grouping properties to control both the content and the initial outline state of grouped rows.	think so	yes	yes, both bound and unbound
GroupTotal Row	a row that appear below of each GroupRow. The GroupTotalRow allows group totals of each column to be displayed independently	yes	?	no	?	don't think so	Sometimes grouping is not enough and there are situations where you need an easy way to see a sum, average or count for certain columns within a group, this can be easily achieved using GroupFooters, In the new Janus Web GridEX for .NET control you can even see those footers when groups are collapsed, or present a total for certain columns in the group headers or even present totals using only those records which meet the criteria specified in a FilterCondition.	yes	yes
Cell Text View	When a cell's text is longer than the width of its column, there is a convenient way for the user to see this whole text	ellipsis, then tool tip	?	?	?	nope	?	don't think so	no
Status Bar	a panel that is used to display the current progress of data operation	yes	?	no	Use ASPxGrid status bar to display information about row number (visible and total), error messages, and custom information relevant to the end-user	no	?	don't think so	no
Nested Tables	Allows unlimited nested tables	yes	?	no	?	no	yes	yes	no
Row Paging	load on demand mechanism	rows are loaded and added to the list as users scroll forward	Virtual scrolling and paging with AJAX. natively supports table paging, which allows you to view the data into small chunks for faster loading and easier navigation	Essential Grids virtual mode supports paging of data enabling you to view extremely large datasets efficiently.	?	C1WebGrid supports a paging mode for cases where the number of rows in the data source is large or not known in advance. Use the navigation links at the bottom of the grid to view additional data rows. The number of rows in a page is controlled by the PageSize property	The data in the control can be paged automatically allowing you to display large volume of information across several pages. Also the appearance of the page navigator can be customized using different kinds of predefined panels.	yes	yes
Data binding	supports all ADO.NET data objects from DataSet, DataTable, DataView to SqlDataReader or OleDbDataReader. Supports data binding of any objects that implements IList interface such as CollectionBase, ArrayList	yes	?	Can be natively bound to DataTables, DataViews etc.  Can be databound to any component that implements the IListSource interface or any component that implements the IList interface. It also supports binding to single dimensional arrays.  It supports "virtual mode" wherein data can be stored in external data structures and supplied on demand. In virtual mode you can bind Syncfusion Essential Grid to any datasource with no need to implement the Microsoft databinding interfaces.	works with any source that supports the IEnumerable interface	yes	Janus Web GridEX Control for .NET is a data-aware, fully editable component that can be bound to any table in a dataset, result set or to any other data source that supports IEnumerable interfaces. The Janus Web GridEX Control for .NET does not sacrifice any group, sort or filter capabilities, when it is bound to any of the previously mentioned interfaces	yes	yes
Data Cache	built in grid cache	lightweight xml-based cache	?	no	?	no	no	no	no
Layout	Grid displayed in maximum space to fit current browser's size. The Grid will automatically calculate its width and height to fit the browser's size and reacts properly on browser's resize and UI element layout's changes.	yes	?	?	?	don't think so	?	don't think so	no
Layout Settings	Are the look and feel elements controlled only in instance property pages or can we use a CSS file	can specify a CSS class	?	?	?	think so, since it supports themes	?	not sure	yes
GUI behaviour	standard Windows UI behaviors for navigation, selection and control focus. Use the keyboard to navigate rows, cells, groups and child rows.	yes	?	yes	?	no	?	don't think so	yes
event handling	customize operation by writing your own code to respond to client's request	such as OnInitializeDataSource, OnInitializeRow, OnCustomSort and so on	?	assume so	?	don't think so	?	Before the XMLHTTP request is made, a client side event (BeforeXmlHttpRequest) will be fired, allowing you to interact with the screen, and possibly provide the user with information on what is happening behind the scenes.	yes
vs.net designer	design time support for Visual Studio.NET design-time environment	single interface designer, all WebGrid's objects can be viewed hierarchically and each object's properties can be configured	?	?	?	don't think so	?	yes	no
Custom Aggregation	ability to perform aggregation function on grouped rows as well as all rows using footer row.	Count, Sum, Average, Min and Max.  Custom as well.	?	?	Summaries allow you to present statistical information such as MIN, MAX, AVG, SUM, and COUNT directly within the ASPxGrid itself	By setting the Aggregate property of a column to Sum, you can extend the grouping functionality of C1WebGrid to display subtotals for each level in the hierarchy. Other aggregate functions are supported, including Min, Max, Average, and Count.	sum, average or count	not sure	uses formula functions for aggegation
Built-in Editing	row addition, changes and deletion	Ajax like functionality avoids full page refresh and full data rebinding	Built-in support for Inserting new records.  Keep in edit/insert mode.  Edit Forms Spanning Across Multiple Columns - r.a.d.grid allows you to set the number of vertical columns, across which an autogenerated edit form will span	yes	?	don't think so	yes	You can now use dedicated row fixed in position at the Top or the Bottom of the WebGrid, for inputting new data.  Since the row is ‘fixed’ in position, it will remain in view even while you scroll through the WebGrid’s rows.	yes
Cell Types	types of edit controls( Textbox, MultilineTextbox, Checkbox, DropdownList, CalendarDropdown, CalendarCombo )	WebGrid dynamically creates and loads the edit controls at runtime and not in the page rendering thus increasing performance by reducing the output html size.  also WebCombo.NET(picklist datasource not rendered at page load).	Edit Command, Bound, CheckBox, Dropdown, PushButton, LinkbButton, HyperLink), as well as Templated columns	Header Text, Static Text, Check Box, Numeric Up / Down, Push Button, Combo Box, Month Calendar, Color Picker, Grid Drop Down	?	?	The control has several “built-in” editors like: MaskEdit, CheckBox, UpDown, Calendar DropDown, Combo* and DropDown Controls	no info	yes
Child Table (Master-detail)	Expanding/Collapsing ChildTable's rows	yes	Client-side expand/collapse and mixed expand/collapse in hierarchical mode - r.a.d.grid now allows you to expand hierarchical tables client-side for better user experience. Moreover, you can specify the expand/collapse mode (client- or server-side) for each individual table, i.e. client-side for first level and server-side second level	no	?	no	The Janus Web GridEX for .NET control now adds support for binding to hierarchical DataSets and present master-detail information within the same window. The Janus Web GridEX for .NET control now adds support for binding to self-referencing hierarchical data sources.	yes	no
Validations and Masked Display	automatically detect DataType, DataFormatString and Culture of the edited cell, unmask the data value for inputting process and mask back the entered value to the assigned DataFormatString according to the DataType and Culture information	yes	?	?	?	don't think so	?	don't think so	yes
localization	globalization of formatted string, calendar, date display	yes	?	?	?	?	?	no info	no
Exporting	HTML, PDF and XML, excel	yes	?	OLE Drag and Drop and Clipboard support	?	?	?	no info	yes
Cell Formulas	performed automatically when users edit and switches to another field	yes	?	no	?	?	?	don't think so	yes
Compliance	web standards:  XHTML 1.1	?	Level A" content compliant (in accordance with the W3C Web Accessibility Guidelines 1.0)	n/a	?	?	?	?	no
Conditional Formatting	apply conditional formatting to grid elements for enhanced readability and usability of the displayed data	?	yes	no	?	?	Cell & Row Level conditional formatting using Format conditions. Can specify a simple condition for a format or use the new FilterCondition property to have compound conditions. Also, the ability to merge 2 or more Formats in a single row for cells meeting specific criteria	?	Yes.  Has to be done programmatically by looping through rows to determine celll or row values.
browser support	Internet Explorer, Gecko-based browsers (Mozilla Firefox, Netscape), and Opera	?	yes, all these	n/a	All Popular Browsers are Supported - ASPxGrid works in IE4+, NN4+ and Mozilla	?	?	?	Yes.  Not all browsers support all functioanilty.
Grouping	grouping records	yes	yes, Outlook-style Grouping - allows easy implementation of multilevel Outlook-style grouping of data from a single table. A unique feature is the ability for single- or multi-column sorting, while the data is grouped by two columns (e.g. group by one/two column(s) and sort by another column)	?	?	C1WebGrid also supports a Microsoft Outlook-style grouping mode that uses client-side Javascript to implement drag-and-drop column headers. Drag a column header to the grouping area at the top of the grid and observe that the column is removed from the grid display. Also, each distinct value for that column is rendered as a collapsible group row. The grouping area can contain multiple columns, and you can move columns from the grouping area back into the grid's header row	Automatic Outlook style Grouping and Sorting by an unlimited number of columns.	?	no
Viewstate Optimization	allows custom management over the performance by controlling the trade-off between client-side load and speed	?	ServerBind - optimum server load, viewstate and render size ServerOnDemand - minimum viewstate and render-size, maximum server load Client - minimum server load, maximum viewstate and render-size. Rich client browser functionality	n/a	?	The grid's most critical properties are stored separately from ViewState and will work even if ViewState is turned off	?	?	yes
Covered/Merged Cells	The ability to have cells that span multiple cell areas	?	?	yes	?	The RowMerge property allows you to merge rows containing identical text. This feature can be used to create streamlined and well-organized grid.	?	?	yes
Hidden Rows or Columns	This capability is useful when you want one grid display data in two different ways	?	?	yes	?	no	?	?	yes
Printing	The built in capability to print a grid	?	?	yes	?	yes	?	Printing a page with a WebGrid can now be done as easily as flipping a bit.  With the new Printer Friendly Support, prior to rendering a page the ReadOnly mode can be set for the control.  The new ReadOnly.PrinterFriendly mode alters the rendering of the WebGrid so the JavaScript and StationaryMargins will be turned off.  The result is a grid that will print through the browser’s built in print functionality.  Since all javascript will be disabled in Printer Friendly Mode, no client-side behavior will be available when in Printer Friendly mode.	yes
cell attributes	The capability for formatting cells, etc	html	html	Cell attributes such as the Interior, Font, Text Alignment, Text Color, Text Orientation, Borders, Wrap Text Mode, Auto Size Mode, Allow Enter Mode, Control Type, Format, Choice List (used by cell types that display a list of choices.), Image List, Data Source, Read/Write mode and Base Style can be changed with a single line of code	?	?	?	?	yes
multi-row records	Intuit Quicken like multi-row records	?	?	yes	?	don't think so	Preview Rows provide a robust interface element, using them you can "preview" one of your data columns below each row, much like Microsoft Outlook does but now with the use of GridEX ColumnSets you can also present one record in more than one row and even have columns spanning across several rows.	?	no
Cell Floating	office like detachable cells	?	?	yes	?	no	?	?	no
Undo / Redo	Multilevel Undo / Redo of user edits	?	?	yes	?	no	?	?	no
ASP.NET 2.0 Themes	?	?	?	n/a	?	Smart Tags, Data-binding, Resourced-based scripts and images, WebParts and ASP.NET 2.0 Themes	?	You can now control exactly what your WebGrid will look like, before it is even dropped onto a form.  By specifying which preset file the WebGrid will use as the default, you can ensure that every WebGrid you drop on a form, already looks exactly the way you want it to.  The preset file used can be customized through a setting on the preferences page in the Quick Design dialog.	yes
Template Event	events from controls in Template columns	?	?	?	?	?	?	The WebGrid now catches events from controls in Template columns and forwards the information to you.  When a control in a Templated column fires a postback (such as a button) an event (ItemCommand) is fired on the server to allow the user to respond to the event on the client.  The event will forward the information from the original control to the application developer so processing decisions can be made.

Terrain Posted: 9/2/2008

I'm hoping that I someday have the problem of generating terrain for brave new virtual worlds.

Reference: CodeProject Fractals, Generating Terrain Textures

Boxcar Shunting Algorithm Posted: 8/28/2008


I've always been in interested in trains.  When I was at AEG, I worked on a moving block train control algorithm.  I also worked on a switching algorithm.  I found this boxcar shunting algorithm interesting.  I would like to build a large model train setup someday.

Reference: CodeProject

language translation Posted: 8/26/2008

I've been interested in on the fly language translation services.  There are many possible applications, but I was thinking that it could be useful in enabling communication between teachers and non english speaking parents.  I'm going to research this further in the future.

Reference: CodeProject - WebResourceProvider

gmax Posted: 8/21/2008


gmax might be a good tool to create graphics models.

Reference: TurboSquid, gMax Tuorial

Contract First Service Development Posted: 8/20/2008

In the bad old days of COM, IDL (interface definition language) defined the interface between the client and the component.  It looked like this:

The problem that it solved was the need to create a component and have that component be usable from Visual Basic and VB enabled applications, such as Word, Excel, etc.  To some extent, it was a problem of Microsoft's own making:  the decision to enable Office applications with a MS controlled language that they could and did change all the time.  From the point of view of standard-orientation and object-orientation, COM was a big step backwards.  Eventually, everyone recognized the reality that COM was ugly and stupid, but only after .NET was announced.  SOAP was the next mechanism to enable mixed environment remote procedure calls.  This replaced the IDL type library with an xml document called the WSDL (Web service description language).

However, some might say that it presented two ways of the doing things, the easy way and the hard way.  It's often true that the hard way in life is better, based on the idea that the hard way leads to something better later on.  It's also true that sometimes the easy way might lead to long term pain since you may not think about some things that the hard way might force you to think about. 

On the other hand, in many cases, the easy way has no long term pain. Sometimes, the hard way is just that, hard and stupid. In this case, the easy way refers to code first development and the hard way is contract first development.

Code First is loaded terminology that Aaron is using to refer to the practice of using an automated tool to generate the WSDL. This results in connecting client code to a web service in a way that is only slightly more inconvenient than normal software development.  His terminology is loaded and deceptive because it implies that it involves coding prior to designing, or coding without thinking.

Contract First is also also loaded terminology that refers to deciding on the interface prematurely, and then hand coding the WSDL.  The terminology is designed to appeal to computer science geeks who have been propagandized into believing that contract law is the most appropriate metaphor for software development.

Contract law is a completely inappropriate metaphor for software development.  Good software is created by an iterative process of refactoring with the goal of increasing cohesion, reducing coupling, increasing encapsulation and maintainability.  Anything that prevents or slows down refactoring is causing bad quality software.  Using contracts to hard code interfaces between components is doing just that.

In this Service Station Article, Aaron Skonnard argues that contract first development is always better.  He indicates that this is a lesson learned from the days of COM and Visual Basic.  I can't speak for COM and VB, since I was smart enough to stay away from that.  However, I disagree that hand coding WSDL is ever better, let alone always better.

Aaron says that "Experience has shown that services implemented using code-first techniques, like the default ASMX model, are less likely to interoperate cleanly in mixed-language environments."  However, I've been able to connect a native C++ client to a .NET web service without any problem.  Authoring WSDL by hand is difficult because the language is complex and confusing.  I can see no advantage even in the long term.

Reference: Contract First Development Example (from the next Aaron Skonnard article)
Reference: Thinktecture's free WsContractFirst tool

High Performance Game Server Posted: 7/25/2008

I was on an idiotic project where we spent 2 million USD in development costs to avoid spending $150k on the right hardware. This mistake was related to hiring 15 very senior developers and then keeping them out of all architecture and design decisions.  However, it was a very stimulating environment to think about designing a high performance game server.

MMORPGs are a very popular game genre throughout the world. Worldwide revenues for MMORPGs exceeded half a billion dollars in 2005, and western revenues exceeded one billion USD in 2006.

Some interesting things from the Comparison of MMORPGs

• Star Wars Galaxies users went from 200k in 2005 to 100k in 2006.
• Eve Online went from 70k in 2005 to 200k in 2008.
• World of WarCraft is the biggest with 10 million active subscribers
• Eve and Everquest both have 200k users, but while EverQuest has 25 servers, Eve only has 1.

So, what's up with Eve Online?  They understand the performance triangle (PT).  The sides of the PT are CPU, Memory, and Input/Output.  The area inside the PT represents the overall performance.  When one increases only CPU and Memory resources, the triangle looks like this:

This is what most folks do, including EverQuest and the idiotic client referenced in the first paragraph.  They increase system performance by focusing only on CPU and Memory, ie by adding more servers.  Eve Online uses a solid state disk (SSD) to increase I/O performance, so the triangle looks like this:

Now, that's a lot more performance.  Some of the technology options are:

• Using AWE Memory in SQL Server 2000
• Using AWE Memory in SQL Server 2005 
• Holographic Drives
• Write Through Cache - A disk or memory cache that supports the caching of writing. Data written by the CPU to memory or to disk is also written into the cache. Write performance is not improved with this method. However, if a subsequent read operation needs that same data, read performance is improved, because the data are already in the high-speed cache
• Solid State Disks   With I/O performance around 250k RPS and response times around .73 milliseconds, this rocks.
• Real Time Database - I have another white paper from 2002 (so performance is better now) with a different SSD vendor combined with Times Ten that shows that they are able to update a database as fast as we need to read from a DB!  They got about 1800 Updates Per Second.  Given that RDMSs probably aren’t optimized for SSD, maybe the ideal would be to use a real time database like TimesTen.   With an SSD, there is NO penalty for random access, where as a traditional RDMS assumes it’s writing to disk.
• SQL Server 2005 on a 64 bit box with a whole lot of memory.  This article compares the state of high end RDMS products. http://www.computerweekly.com/Articles/2005/11/01/212652/HasSQLServer2005beenworththewait.htm http://www.eggheadcafe.com/articles/20050613.asp
• Flash Vs. RAM Solid State Disks
• Oracle Query performance is 176 times better with a SSD  (http://www.texmemsys.com/files/f000139.pdf)
  http://weblogs.asp.net/jezell/archive/2006/03/20/440649.aspx

Texas Memory Systems achieved the highest number of IOPS (291,208.58) and the lowest Price Performance ($0.67/IOPS) when they took part in the Storage Performance Council's SPC-1 IOPS test in January 2008.  Some other success stories:

900_success
http://www.superssd.com/success/

Now, let's move on to some architecture options.  The most ideal non-SSD architecture is 4 tier: 

1. client app tier - the client application is the video game running on the end user's machine.
2. web tier - the web tier is a web service or REST interface that is called on a regular basis by the client app.
3. application tier - the app tier is basically a cache of the database.
4. data tier - database of the game universe.

The ideal SSD architecture is 3 tier:

1. client app tier - video game running on the end user's machine.
2. web tier - web service or REST interface.
3. data tier - database of the game universe, with an SSD for data store.

The difference would seem to be minor, just an extra tier, but the devil is in the details.  The overall performance is dependent on the number of servers of course, but how many servers are needed for a certain load?  This brings in the concept of the architecture efficiency. 

If the web tier gets 1000 rps, and the app tier also gets 1000 rps, then it will take 2 machines for every 1000 rps of performance.  This means that a 4 tier architecture will cost twice as much to scale.  This is reduced if the web tier performance is greater.

This graph is based on achieving a 2-1 ratio of web tier to app tier.  Even if we can achieve a 4-1 ratio, the 3 tier version will still cost less.  In fact, we would have to achieve an 11-1 ratio for the 4 tier version to cost the same as the 3 tier version.

So, to make sense, the 4 tier architecture would have to be easier to develop, to reduce the up front engineering costs. However, the 4 tier architecture is not just more difficult to develop, it's several orders of magnitude more difficult to engineer.

It's quite an engineering challenge to create a robust scalable application that avoids database I/O by moving data from disk to cache. This difficulty is why the project mentioned in the first paragraph spent 2 million in development costs.  It's very expensive to develop, and when you're done, you don't have something better, you have something complicated that is also more expensive to scale.  This would all be simplified by just doing away with the disk.  When Eve Online switched to an SSD, they got a 40x boost in performance and handled 17000 concurrent users. 

Update: RamSan-440 is the world’s first non-volatile RAM-based solid state disk (SSD) to sustain up to 600,000 IOPS (input/outputs per second)

References:  SPC Benchmark 2004 with pricing info, RamSan-440