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How big does the SQLite database get? How do you maintain such great performance? (Other than indexes?)


The resulting SQLite database file is currently 8.3 GB, most of which is taken up by the `links` table. The big performance wins are having a handful of indexes (see the .sql files[1] for the database's schema) and preprocessing a lot of data so I don't have to do duplicate work every time a query occurs. For example, instead of the `links` table going from `source_id` to `target_id` and having a ton of rows which have the same `source_id`, I go from `id` to `outgoing_links` (which is a |-separate string of all source page IDs). Computing each page's incoming and outgoing links is the really heavy work and I only do that at database creation time, using a beefy GCP machine with 8 vCPUs, 52 GB RAM, and a 256 GB SSD. It still takes about an hour, but it's a one time cost and means I can run the actual service on a much smaller machine which won't cost me a fortune to maintain. Also, SQLite is just very fast and performant out of the box, so as usual, it's a matter of choosing the right tools for the job.

[1] https://github.com/jwngr/sdow/tree/master/database




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