Right now I'm developing the prototype of a web application that aggregates large number of text entries from a large number of users. This data must be frequently displayed back and often updated. At the moment I store the content inside a MySQL database and use NHibernate ORM layer to interact with the DB. I've got a table defined for users, roles, submissions, tags, notifications and etc. I like this solution because it works well and my code looks nice and sane, but I'm also worried about how MySQL will perform once the size of our database reaches a significant number. I feel that it may struggle performing join operations fast enough. Right now I'm developing the prototype of a web