Read Scaling Decisions
When To Apply
Use read-heavy APIs
High-volume external endpoints where many users repeatedly read the same data.
Avoid low-read cases
Write-heavy 2:1 or 1:1 workloads and 1000-user apps do not need complex read scaling.
Check consistency needs
Financial, inventory, and real-time collaboration may reject stale cached reads.
Scaling Progression
1
Optimize inside the DB
Add indexes, tune data model, and denormalize before adding infrastructure.
2
Scale the DB horizontally
Add read replicas or shard when one database server hits limits.
3
Add external caches
Use application caches or CDNs when repeated reads dominate.