[pixl97]

What were your latency requirements on pulling a record out and how complex were the joins to pull said records?

If you have a simple db structure with a few tables and very clear data/index rules then billions and billions of records is pretty easy. Your indexes cut out 99% of the work and everything runs smooth and efficient.

But then you can have eldritch horrors where your stored procedures look like seedy detective novels where you chase join after join and have scary high memory requirements on execution.