Search places down - again. Why?

When will the Lindens finally understand that the 'search places' search is a crucial function? Each newbie who enters SL the first time will do a search places first - and if it doesn't work, he or she will be lost. If 'search places' works only up to a database load of 16.000 people,
it will have to be improved - asap. 16.000 people at SL is nothing, it is less than 1% of all accounts, and it seems to overload the database. What if 5% of all accounts decide to log in, or 10%? It will be a disaster.

Yes it does seem clear that issues arise directly related to the number of users of the grid. But thats nothing particularly controversial , any server administrator or dba will tell you . How do other MMORPGS ( or database servers) deal wit hthis . They simply dont let more than the known maximum users log in .

I dont know of many databases that dont give you fairly clear and very precise feedback on load and most allow that to be controlled too based on your server resources.

LL have some difficult decisions to make ...

I think that the Linden laboratory, including the hot room where the Linden servers stand, is infected by the Heavy Lead Bacteria, HLB. The heavy lead bacteria, as heavy as they are, don't like to move forward or backward. But they easily are to turn right or left - and that is exactly what I observe. Like a figure skater, I can easily turn right or left, twice, three times, but as soon as I want to walk forward or backward, the heavy lead comes into play and glues me to the ground. Even more serious, seriouser, almost seriousest - I sometimes sink through the ground. The lead pulls me down, but sometimes something like the Holy Ghost gives me a lift and lifts me up to ground level - of course, every time that happens, I pray and recite the Rosary. In case you weren't a religious person before, SL will make you a padre. Yes, I am concerned. Concerned because my employer (for 30 years) will invest millions without even having heard about HLB. Is there a savety belt in SL? Preventing investors from discharging millions into ground? Telling them in advance that the entire database is working permanently at overload conditions, while only less than 1% of the inhabitants are online? SL is far away from any professional stable condition - less than any game that has been released in the past. Monkey Island, all episodes, were a soild rock, compared to SL.

The real problem seems to be LL's decision to house every game resource -- search, inventory, who knows what else -- on the same servers. This does not scale because inventory has O(population), since the average number of possessions per account probably doesn't change much; whereas search has O(population squared), since the number of places to search AND the number of searches performed both grow linearly with population.

Therefore if search is not hived off into separate servers, it will absorb resources disproportionately as the game grows.

LL needs to outsource this critical service if they can't provide it in a scalable fashion. So far, they're failing.