Our friends at Phonofile have done it again. The software we developed with them (see European Digital Music Downloads - Wholesale!) was used for the on-line store and music download site for the Eurovision Song Contest. The WebObjects and WireHose based store application can be found here: http://www.eurovisiondownloadshop.tv.

Eurovision is big. Really big. This year was it’s 50th anniversary contest (can you see “American Idol” lasting 50 years? I can’t.) And the rivalry between countries can be fierce. (See the enormous Wikipedia entry to see who won, who lost and who hates who.)

What does this mean for our WebObjects application? A peak load of between 2,500 and 3,000 concurrent sessions (with 20 minute timeout) and a sustained download rate during the finals of 6MB/second. Yowza! And this is just one of Phonofile’s dozens of custom portals all running against a common backend infrastructure. Sweet.