ABS

Always Be Streaming

Johnny Ray Austin

Creative Technologist - iStrategyLabs

@recursivefunk

What is a stream?

Streams

• Source
• Destination
• Chunks

Old & Busted

User requests data, your application connects to a data source then waits for all the data to come back, your application returns the data to the user.

New (old?) Hotness

User requests data, your application connects to a data source, as soon as some data is available, that chunk of data is sent back to the user immediately. Repeat until there is no more data.

Why?

• Data flow management

  • ​Pipes
• ​Variable data volume
  • ​Check volume periodically
• ​Memory buffer protection

(spoiler alert: users are impatient)

Perception is Key

Actual performance increase

VS 

Perceived performance increase

Actual Performance

• Database Indexes
• Data Caches
  • <3 Redis
• Web Sockets
  • Keep it real (time)
    • May go wrong

Perceived Performance

• User centric
  • Time to respond
• Progressive rendering*

What about the server?

Of Course

• Boiler plate
  • User auth/privileges
• Very fast database hits
  • Think twice when database joins are involved

How can I do this?

• Database
  • PostgresSql
• Server
  • Node.js
  • Python
• Cache
  • Redis
• Messaging
  • ZeroMQ
• Browser
  • highland.js

Questions?