Much the way we do not understand a math problem by looking at an answer circled on a test sheet, we cannot understand an application by looking at a flattened row in a database. We understand a math problem only when we look at the scratch work. Life is easy when things are expressed in their organic format, and database rows are not an organic format for application-tier objects in the three-tier world. The object form is the best.

A number of products are emerging to address this need to help developers and operators better manage work-in-progress data, such as Memcached, WADI and Terracotta. These products can simplify development enormously while still providing the resilience and scalability that enterprise applications need.

They can also dramatically reduce the amount of network traffic and database licenses needed to provide high availability, and relieve the scalability bottlenecks many applications encounter when they use mechanisms such as database and message queues to share work-progress data between nodes of the same application cluster. So, when you think your application needs a scratch pad, you now have more options to consider.

Zilka is founder and CTO of Terracotta. You can reach him at azilka@Terracotta.com.