6 Performance and Tuning Considerations

The most important factor in optimizing the performance of your enterprise deployment topology is understanding how to monitor its behavior and resource usage. Oracle Application Server provides several tools to help. See Oracle Application Server 10g Performance Guide for more information on how to monitor your installation. In addition, most hardware vendors supply a number of tools to monitor hardware resource usage.

This chapter contains the following reference information to help you tune your deployment topology’s performance.

Origin Server (OS) Network Parameters
Oracle HTTP Server (OHS)
SSL
Oracle Internet Directory (OID)
JVM parameters
JSPs
Web Cache
Logging Level
Database Connections
Portal

6.1 Origin Server (OS) Network Parameters

Ensure that your OS network parameters have been set for performance and that you have sufficient network capacity. See the Oracle Application Server 10g Performance Guide for more information.

6.2 Oracle HTTP Server (OHS)

Understand how to use the MaxClients parameter for OHS to control concurrency for your Application Server configuration. Understand when to use persistent connections with OHS (keep alive) and how long to maintain a persistent connection. Each persistent connection will use an Apache child process (on Unix). See the Oracle Application Server 10g Performance Guide for more information.

6.3 SSL

Remember that the use of SSL can add substantial performance overhead and use it appropriately. The first request in an SSL session takes more longer than subsequent requests. You should also understand how to configure session duration for SSL. See the Oracle Application Server 10g Performance Guide and Oracle Application Server Certificate Authority Administrator’s Guide for more information

6.4 Oracle Internet Directory (OID)

When using OID, use LDAP caching. you can also improve your performance with jazn-xml if it is sufficient for your security requirements. See these guides for more information;

Oracle Application Server 10g Performance Guide
Oracle Internet Directory Administrator’s Guide
Oracle Application Server 10g Security Guide

6.5 JVM parameters

Set the appropriate Java Virtual Machine (JVM) parameters for your Java application and your platform. Use the most recently certified JVM if possible. For example, JDK 1.4.1 is faster than JDK 1.3.1 in Oracle Corporation’s tests. See Oracle Application Server 10g Performance Guide for more information.

6.6 JSPs

You can improve JSP performance by disabling timestamp checking and disabling session generation if they are not required.

6.7 Web Cache

Using of Web Cache can dramatically improve the performance of your application. Evaluate your application for caching potential. Provide sufficient memory and network bandwidth for Web Cache and use the fastest CPU possible. The increase in throughput that is achievable with Web Cache can make network bandwidth the primary bottleneck.

For more information, see Oracle Application Server Web Cache Administrator’s Guide.

6.8 Logging Level

By default, Oracle Application Server components have been set to logging levels appropriate for a production system. More detailed logging can be enabled to provide additional information, but will add performance overhead to your system. Reserve the use of debug log levels for troubleshooting.

6.9 Database Connections

Several Oracle Application Server components provide database connectivity and allow you to tune the number of database connections maintained and the duration of database sessions. See Oracle Application Server 10g Performance Guide for more information on tuning database connections and working with JDBC and PL/SQL metrics.

6.10 Portal

For portal installations with high usage, you can increase the concurrency of the Portal Parallel Page Engine. However, if your system(s) lack sufficient resources to handle the increased concurrency, this can have a negative impact on your overall performance.