Anyone know what's involved (software programming/database wise) for an online system to cater for millions of active users simultaneously

A lot of work .. a good bit of dedicated hardware ... loadbalancing


Can you be any more specific as to the content ... are you cable to cache the content ... this would take a good bit of strain off however if its all dynamic .. think about having 1000000 hits on your database at the same time.

I'll assume you mean more the capability to have millions of users ?

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Forbairt Media | Web Design & Development Galway / Dublin, Ireland - coming soon ... ( vague but descriptive isn't it )

Recent Work: Safari Club African Safari Holidays - Botswana Safaris

Thanks for reply Forbairt.

It's a concept at the moment i hope to send to Google in the next week. Has the potential to generate millions of cash in it's first week and each week thereafter.

It's a system that would have potentially millions of users active at the one time.

Anyone interested in building it if Google shoots me down

Well you'll have to weigh up potential revenue against cost of all the machinery / bandwidth .. and so on.

I'd think one would have a working model before they approached google as well to get bought out ..

Do google like people approaching them with ideas ?

You'll want to check out NDA's and stuff as well if you haven't already

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Forbairt Media | Web Design & Development Galway / Dublin, Ireland - coming soon ... ( vague but descriptive isn't it )

Recent Work: Safari Club African Safari Holidays - Botswana Safaris

Yes, i'll have to word my business proposal wisely as they won't agree to an NDA first. If they are interested, they will get back to you.

I intend to send it to Google/Yahoo/MSFT.

Google

Yahoo! Corporate Development - Yahoo

https://members.microsoft.com/omc/Welcome.aspx - Microsoft

load balancing and caching are the two words that spring to mind - i guess the balancing is done by the server tho.
if your code is not optimal that could slow things right down too..

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A lot of reusable code/scripts that are fast and not querying duplicate or un-needed data!

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Irish Gaming Network | Stolen Car Listings

I'm not a programmer so just getting a feel to see what is involved on that end. Oracle backend i'd presume?

Good Progamming, a lot of robust sans, database servers, backup facilities, Dedicated Bandwidth required. Hence the need to throw the concept at the big players. To them, a small investment to gain big returns.

Thanks guys for your responses. Keep them coming.

The concept is fairly simple so the programming in my own opinion wouldn't be overkill (but i'm only guessing there)

As said above, your best bet is to have a working model of some sort before approaching anyone!

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Irish Gaming Network | Stolen Car Listings