scalability

How well a solution to some problem will work when the size of

the problem increases.

For example, a central server of some kind with ten

clients may perform adequately but with a thousand clients

it might fail to meet response time requirements. In this

case, the average response time probably scales linearly with

the number of clients, we say it has a complexity of O(N)

("order N") but there are problems with other complexities.

E.g. if we want N nodes in a network to be able to communicate

with each other, we could connect each one to a central

exchange, requiring O(N) wires or we could provide a direct

connection between each pair, requiring O(N^2) wires (the

exact number or formula is not usually so important as the

highest power of N involved).

(1995-03-29)