Scalability

Scalability is the ability of a system to handle growth. An application is scalable if it can be extended easily and support increasing numbers of users. There is no such thing as out-of-the-box scalability although many projects seem to claim this. Give me the most 'scalable' library in the world and I will make it crawl, simply by writing poor code. On the other hand, give me some clunky framework that does not scale at all and I can make it fly. A library or framework is only as scalable as the code that uses it allows it to be. Yes, it is as simple as that.

Does RB Scale?

There is no such thing as 'free scalability', you have to work for it. You have to adapt your application carefully to changing demands. So unlike other projects, I will give you an honest answer; RedBeanPHP does not offer 'free scalability' because it simply cannot predict the roadmap of your application. However, because RedBeanPHP is easy to use and easy to maintain, it will save you time and energy. This time and energy can then be used to focus on scalability and design proper solutions to allow your application to grow.

FUSE

There is one feature of RedBeanPHP that directly improves scalability though: FUSE. Fuse allows you build a prototype application with beans and controllers and add the models later on without having to refactor the old code. This works because models are connected to beans without having to change beans into models. Because of this there is a toll-free upgrade from prototype to full fledged application.

Arcane frameworks

Scalability is often used as an excuse by very arcane architectures like EJB. I therefore even consider it bad practice to take scalability into account at the start of a project, at least for most projects (talking about the typical web application here). I consider maintainability to be much more important.

Who uses RedBeanPHP

RedBeanPHP is used for all types of applications and tools. It has been integrated in various frameworks, it has been used for various projects ranging from financial business applications to embedded systems to measure changes in temperature.

RedBeanPHP is the ORM of choice of various cool frameworks.

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