Performance overview
Performance refers to the way that a computer system behaves in response to a particular workload. Performance is measured in terms of system response time, throughput, and resource utilization.
- The resources that are available on the system
- How well those resources are used and shared
- Processing larger, or more demanding, workloads without increasing processing costs
- Obtaining faster system response times, or higher throughput, without increasing processing costs
- Reducing processing costs without degrading service to users
Some benefits of performance tuning, such as a more efficient use of resources and the ability to add more users to the system, are tangible. Other benefits, such as greater user satisfaction because of quicker response times, are intangible.
Performance tuning guidelines
- Remember the law of diminishing returns: The greatest performance benefits usually come from your initial efforts.
- Do not tune just for the sake of tuning: Tune to relieve identified constraints. Tuning resources that are not the primary cause of performance problems can actually make subsequent tuning work more difficult.
- Consider the whole system: You cannot tune one parameter or resource in isolation. Before you make an adjustment, consider how the change will affect the system as a whole. Performance tuning requires trade-offs among various system resources. For example, you might increase buffer pool sizes to achieve improved I/O performance, but larger buffer pools require more memory, and that might degrade other aspects of performance.
- Change one parameter at a time: Do not change more than one factor at a time. Even if you are sure that all the changes will be beneficial, you will have no way of assessing the contribution of each change.
- Measure and configure by levels: Tune one level of your
system at a time. System levels include:
- Hardware
- Operating system
- Application server and requester
- Database manager
- SQL and XQuery statements
- Application programs
- Check for hardware as well as software problems: Some performance problems can be corrected by applying service to your hardware, your software, or both. Do not spend excessive time monitoring and tuning your system before applying service to the hardware or software.
- Understand the problem before you upgrade your hardware: Even if it seems that additional storage or processor power could immediately improve performance, take the time to understand where your bottlenecks are. You might spend money on additional disk storage, only to find that you do not have the processing power or the channels to exploit it.
- Put fallback procedures in place before you start tuning: If tuning efforts result in unexpected performance degradation, the changes made should be reversed before you attempt an alternative approach. Save your original settings so that you can easily undo changes that you do not want to keep.
Developing a performance improvement process
The performance improvement process is an iterative approach to monitoring and tuning aspects of performance. Depending on the results of this performance monitoring, you will adjust the configuration of the database server and make changes to the applications that use the database server.
Base your performance monitoring and tuning decisions on your knowledge of the kinds of applications that use the data and on your understanding of patterns of data access. Different kinds of applications have different performance requirements.
- Define the performance objectives.
- Establish performance indicators for the major constraints in the system.
- Develop and execute a performance monitoring plan.
- Continually analyze monitoring results to determine which resources require tuning.
- Make one adjustment at a time.
If, at some point, you can no longer improve performance by tuning the database server or applications, it might be time to upgrade the hardware.
Performance information that users can provide
- What do you mean by
slow response
? Is it 10% slower than you expect it to be, or tens of times slower? - When did you notice the problem? Is it recent, or has it always been there?
- Do other users have the same problem? Are these users one or two individuals or a whole group?
- If a group of users is experiencing the same problem, are these users connected to the same local area network?
- Does the problem seem to be related to a specific type of transaction or application program?
- Do you notice any pattern of occurrence? For example, does the problem occur at a specific time of day, or is it continuous?
Performance tuning limits
The benefits of performance tuning are limited. When considering how much time and money should be spent on improving system performance, be sure to assess the degree to which the investment of additional time and money will help the users of the system.
Tuning can often improve performance if the system is encountering response time or throughput problems. However, there is a point beyond which additional tuning cannot help. At this point, consider revising your goals and expectations. For more significant performance improvements, you might need to add more disk storage, faster CPUs, additional CPUs, more main memory, faster communication links, or a combination of these.