1) - Discuss the impact of data quality problems on MySpace as described in this case study.
Since the Site was launched in 2003, the social network site “MySpace” has become the world’s leading social portal for connecting people who relate in connection with its content, and culture. MySpace projects an idea to its global community to experience the Internet through a social lens by integrating individual’s personal profiles, photo sharing, professional and entertainment videos, blogs, instant messaging, as well as one of the largest music community. MySpace.com has been one of the fastest growing sites on the Internet with 65 million subscribers and 260,000 new users registering each day. Yet with their unexpected growth along came the growth of other popular social networking sites such “Face book” and few other competitors which seemed to have gained ground, do to "MySpace" criticized performance.
In its initial phases, MySpace operated with two Web servers communicating with one database server and a Microsoft SQL Server database. The site continued adding Web servers to handle increased user requests and demands, once the number of accounts exceeded 500,000 the site added more SQL Server databases; one served as a master database, and the others focused on retrieving data for user’s page requests. After two million accounts were activated, MySpace switched to a vertical partitioning model in which separate databases supported distinct functions of the Web site, such as the log-in screen, user profiles, and blogs. Yet at some point the separated functions will still share data which will create another problem to their list! After three million accounts were reached, rather than investing in more sophisticated types of