[nine_k]

When it "scales", it usually means "scales up". A scalable solution is such that can withstand a large and increasing load, past the usual limitations of obvious solutions.

Being elastic is nice, but not always needed. In most cases of database usage, downsizing never happens, or expected to happen: logically, data are only added, and any packaging and archiving only exists to keep the size manageable.

[prng2021]

You’re conflating things. The question was about scaling compute and memory up and down based on load and you’re commenting about never needing to downsize on storage.