Lately our web host has been somewhat concerned about the database load generated by the Frets On Fire World Charts web application. While the app does employ a number of caching schemes, it executes some pretty large queries in the process, which are reportedly hindering other users of the system. Given the choice of shutting down the service or mitigating the load, we opted for the latter by adding a process that removes old scores from the database.

The charts now list the best 50 scores for each song and expire all others that are at least three weeks old. The expired scores will disappear from all views, including the personal player pages. This is a pretty aggressive scheme, but it is needed to keep the amount of data bounded. Note that instead of deleting the scores, we are simply moving them to an offline table.

Next we’ll monitor how well this scheme performs in practice and tune it accordingly. Please post your questions and suggestions in the comments below.