[dokuwiki] Load balancing hypothetical

Okay, I have a hypothetical question, one I need to be thinking about now in 
preparation for possibilities later.

Let's assume that we've worked out any significant scalability issues Dokuwiki 
might have.  We'll have used some sort of scalability test suite to get to 
there.  At this point, further improving scalability requires upgrading the 
server's hardware, such as by adding memory or boosting clock speed or using 
smarter drives.  But even then we eventually reach a point of diminishing 
returns (for the investment) and the next best step is to start adding servers. 
 That is, at a certain point we need load balancing.

I could not find any association between the words "load balancing" and 
Dokuwiki anywhere, though there are some discussions of scalability and 
performance about.

Roughly speaking, what would it take to enable Dokuwiki for load balancing?  I 
think details like page indexing, page locks, user profiles, ACLs, revision 
history, etc., could ultimately be farmed out to a database (via interface 
abstractions), but how would we load balance the page and media files 
themselves?  Is it possible to load-balance a filesystem?  And would it be 
possible to do so within the Dokuwiki architecture?  I DO NOT want my page and 
media files in a database, save possibly by mirroring.

To clarify, I'm not suggesting that we have Dokuwiki lose its Dokuwikiness by 
going all out to a database.  I don't care where optimization tables go -- they 
should go where they work best and be done via add-ons -- but I do care that 
all my actual content go in the file system where I can get at it with other 
utilities.  This to me is a fundamental Dokuwiki trademark, and I don't want to 
violate it.  Okay, hopefully I've preempted the "You don't want Dokuwiki/case 
closed" argument.

So I'm having visions of a prettier, smarter, friendlier MediaWiki...

~joe

P.S. NOTE FOR NON-PROGRAMMERS: The jargon may have misled you.  I'm not 
anywhere suggesting that Dokuwiki core be changed to use a database.  This 
would be done via optional add-ons, and only servers experiencing extremely 
high traffic loads would bother to use them.
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