title: Should I consider using Hadoop for a new PHP application?
body: <p>I've built a PHP web application prototype as a startup project with a MySQL database behind it, but now the whole thing needs to be rewritten. </p>
  
  <p>I'd like to keep PHP as the server side language but I don't know what kind of database I should use to be able to search and fetch data constantly using mainly AJAX.</p>
  
  <p>I think a MySQL relational database would do the job for a while, but I'd like to be prepared for the time when I have many users from all around the world who need to access their data quickly. Right now all I have got is a VPS at Digital Ocean that runs PHP and MySQL, it serves my 70 test users well.</p>
  
  <p>But what if my numbers start to increase? I can't just store hundreds of million (or billions) rows of data in one single database without having latency etc. problems, can I? Should I consider using Hadoop from the very beginning so I won't have that much problem in the future? How should I get prepared for having to scale things in the future?</p>