Sizing recommendations for DOORS Next

Use these guidelines to size your DOORS® Next repository for optimal performance and scalability. While the limits are not enforced, exceeding them might impact system responsiveness and view performance..

Larger deployments require more powerful hardware. For more information, see ELM Sizing Overview.
Parameter Oracle Db2®
Number of requirement versions (total) 20,000,000 10,000,000
Number of requirement versions (configuration) 500,000 250,000
Number of versions per requirement 10 10
Number of components (total) 4000 2500
Number of components per project area 40 40
Number of contributions to a global configuration 2500 1250
Requirements per module 10000 10000
Requirements per folder 10000 10000
Requirements returned by a view 10000 10000
Links per requirement 10 10
Number of cross-application links per view 1000 1000

Number of requirement versions (total)

Total number of requirement versions stored in a single DOORS Next repository. It includes both the initial creation of requirements and all subsequent edits. Each time a requirement is edited, a new version is generated and added to the repository.

Monitor this metric using the following MBean:

com.ibm.rdm.metric:name=TotalNumberOfArtifacts, type=artifact

Number of requirement versions (per configuration)

Total number of requirement versions within a single configuration. A configuration is a collection of related requirement versions that represent a specific state or context of the data.

Each project area includes at least one configuration. If configuration management is enabled, each component within the project area will also have at least one configuration.

Monitoring this metric helps assess the complexity and scale of individual configurations, which can impact performance and usability.

Number of versions per requirement

Average number of times each requirement has been modified within a configuration. Each modification creates a new version, which contributes to both the total version count for the repository and the configuration.

Performance of views can be affected by the combination of this metric and the number of requirements displayed in a view. A high number of versions per requirement, especially when many requirements are shown simultaneously, may lead to slower view rendering and reduced responsiveness.

Total number of components

Total number of components created across all project areas when configuration management is enabled. Components are used to organize and manage sets of requirements independently within a project area.

You can monitor this metric using the following MBean:

com.ibm.rdm.metric:name=TotalNumberOfComponents,type=cm

Number of components per project area

Number of components created within a single project area when configuration management is enabled. Components help organize requirements into manageable units, but having too many can affect system performance.

As the number of components increases, the time required to open the Permissions tab during project area editing also increases. To maintain optimal performance, keep the number of components per project area below 40.

Contributions to a global configuration

Number of DOORS Next configurations that are referenced by a single global configuration.

The size of a global configuration impacts the performance of views that display link columns, or that use a “Link Exists” or “Link does not exist” filter.

Requirements per module

Total number of requirements included in a single module.

Requirements per folder

Number of requirements contained in a folder.

Requirements returned by a view

Number of requirements returned by a view (after applying the view filter).

Links per requirement

Average number of links per requirement in the context of a specified view.

The performance of views that display link columns is impacted by the average number of links per requirement as well as the number of requirements displayed by the view.

Number of cross-application links per view

Number of links to other Engineering Lifecycle Management applications shown in a view, including links to other DOORS Next servers and tools like Engineering Test Management or Engineering Workflow Management.

You can increase the limit by adjusting the Maximum Links Results value in Advanced Properties under the LinkIndexService section. However, it is recommended to keep this value below 10,000 to avoid degraded link lookup performance.

This limit does not apply to links between requirements on the same DOORS Next server.