Think Time

Think time is the average elapsed time between operations performed by users in a Siebel application. Think time includes the time required by users to conduct customer interactions, enter data into the application, and work in other applications.

The assumed think time has a direct relationship to the number of concurrent tasks that a multithreaded process can support. However, factors such as a high degree of customization or heavy use of scripting will reduce the number of tasks that each process can support.

Determine the average think time based on the usage patterns typical of your user base. After the application has been configured, perform a clickstream analysis for your key processes, and try to capture the time between the user actions (operations) that are represented by the clicks. Also use the list statistics command in Siebel Server Manager to help you calculate average think time.

Consider the average time between each operation (such as clicking New) and between each overall transaction (such as performing all steps for creating a new contact). Mouse clicks do not equate to operations if they do not send a request to the Siebel application infrastructure. Calculate the overall average think time based on all of these factors.

The ratio of 100 (100 tasks per process), based on a 30-second think time, is assumed in the formula for setting the MaxMTServers parameter. This formula is presented in Tuning Siebel Application Object Manager Components for CPU and Memory Utilization.

The ratio of 100 is based on having approximately three users running operations at the exact same time (100 divided by 30 = approximately 3.3). It is generally observed that each multithreaded process can handle about three operations at the same time with minimal performance degradation.

With longer think times, one multithreaded process can support more than 100 concurrent tasks; with shorter think times, fewer tasks. For example, if the think time is 15 seconds between user operations, then about 50 tasks per process could be supported (15 times 3.3 = approximately 50, or 50 divided by 15 = approximately 3.3).