One day, there will be a bigish war, and comms between the sides will be cut off, either by law, or all comms links severed.
At that point, every global business will have to figure out how to split their business in two, their database in two, their server infrastructure in two, etc. and have both halves work.
I suspect that few businesses have prepared for such an eventuality, and I suspect severe disruption can be expected when it happens.
For anyone designing something new today, the main prep you can do is to never use sequences for database ID's. By using random id's, you can mostly let your replicated database partition itself, and a later merge isn't too hard as long as most users have been operating on only one side of the divide.
I love, in honestly both somewhat sarcastic but mostly very real sense, that hacker news discussion of global thermonuclear war...is how to prepare your database unique ID scheme for unforeseen sharding :->
> At that point, every global business will have to figure out how to split their business in two, their database in two, their server infrastructure in two, etc. and have both halves work.
Or give up serving one side. Probably the one the executives of the company don't live in. Like how many companies stopped operating in Russia after their war in Ukraine got into high gear.
In such a situation, I foresee something more like the splitting of the Roman Empire. There's no reason to stop serving global customers just because the users are separated from HQ. Especially if the servers are already on both sides of the geo-political border.
The Roman empire had a tradition of splitting the control of the areas between multiple people at several points starting from Diocletian's tetrarchy onward.
The last east/west split was different on that it was that last one.
In a way, you could look at the period of absolute control by a single person as an exception in Roman history.
Did many businesses stop operating in russia? Or did many of those shops/restaurants/etc physically located in Russia simply rename and continue operations independent from the parent company?
For example, Mcdonalds is now operated as Vkusno i tochka [1], and has awfully similar menu and branding to Mcdonalds.
> For anyone designing something new today, the main prep you can do
"Our new SaaS offers high security, reslience to deal with usage spikes, and compatability with doomsday scenarios where fascist governments have taken over during war-time while implementing draconic wars that are to sure to end with society as a dystopian nightmare. Oh, and we're Soc 2 compliant."
In such dire straits as you describe, companies and individuals will likely be forbidden to provide any sort of commercial services to the opposing side.
At that point, every global business will have to figure out how to split their business in two, their database in two, their server infrastructure in two, etc. and have both halves work.
I suspect that few businesses have prepared for such an eventuality, and I suspect severe disruption can be expected when it happens.
For anyone designing something new today, the main prep you can do is to never use sequences for database ID's. By using random id's, you can mostly let your replicated database partition itself, and a later merge isn't too hard as long as most users have been operating on only one side of the divide.