How would I implement separate databases for reading and writing operations?

I’m not a specialist but the read/write master database and read-only slaves pattern is a “common” pattern, especially for big applications doing mostly read accesses or data warehouses: it allows to scale (you add more read-only slaves if required) it allows to tune the databases differently (for either efficient reads or efficient writes) What would …

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What is the “best” way to store international addresses in a database?

Plain freeform text. Validating all the world’s post/zip codes is too hard; a fixed list of countries is too politically sensitive; mandatory state/region/other administrative subdivision is just plain inappropriate (all too often I’m asked which county I live in–when I don’t, because Greater London is not a county at all). More to the point, it’s …

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