Interview with eBay architect worth a listen

Normally I'd save something like this for my Twitter feed but I think the latest espisode of Software Engineering Radio is worthy of a dedicated blog entry. In episode #109 Markus interviews Randy Shoup about his role as a Distinguished Architect at eBay. The interview plays like a scripted version of a conference presentation - you can see the slides and bulleted lists in your head - but that doesn't distract from the excellent content. Randy goes into detail about the architectural compromises eBay has to make in order to value performance, stability, scalability, and up-time above traditional "best practices" of software development like referential integrity, transactions, etc. It will either enlighten or infuriate you; either way it's worth a listen.