Short clip: Zillow processing terabytes of property records

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>> Now, you're providing a huge amount of information and I know that you just upgraded your database to include a lot more home. So how are you able to keep up on the back end with the rate of growth you're having?

>> It's a real challenge. I mean we're processing terabytes and terabytes of data each night. We're processing millions of new property records, new transactions, new property attributes. We get that information from a variety of sources. As I said there's over 3,000 counties in the U.S. and some of those have electronic records and some of them don't. And so it's a real challenge to pull that information together into a common database and then present that on the web in a real easy to use format.

>> So what are you using on the back end to ensure that you have something that's reliable and allows you the flexibility you need to really grow and change and keep that database from getting stale?

>> Well, we've created a processing pipeline that allows us to import data, new records, to get them cleaned in a common format. We store all that in a variety of databases. We have Microsoft SQL Server databases as well as MySQL databases that power or site. On top of that we've built a proprietary search engine in C++ running on Linux that allows us to serve up that information at lightening speeds.

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