US Patent 9514018 Scaling framework for querying

Certain example embodiments described herein relate to techniques for scaling processing systems. For instance, in certain example embodiments, a scaling master receives a user-specified scaling and/or alerting query. The scaling and/or alerting query is transmitted to scaling agents at respective ones of the processing elements, the transmission using the connection layer. Each of the scaling agents executes the at least one scaling and/or alerting query. Each of the scaling agents reports a result of the executing to the scaling master using the connection layer. The scaling master forms a scaling decision based on the result reported by each of the scaling agents.