[comp.databases] Server performance

stevec@otl.SanDiego.NCR.COM (Steve Chaput) (01/17/90)

I have a question concerning Sybase configurations.  In a 
hypothetical situation, we have a Sun dedicated as a Sybase 
4.0 SQL Server on a LAN.  Assume that we have tuned our server 
for optimum performance.  However the client application 
accessing the server requires greater performance.  The client 
application accesses ATM machines and performs single row 
updates, inserts, and fetches on a very large table (350MB).  
We want to dedicate another identical Sun to share the server 
requests to increase client performance.  We are willing to 
modify the client application and partition the data between 
machines. Replication of the data is undesirable. 

How can we decrease the time it takes the client to process n 
transactions utilizing the additional machine ?  How much of a 
change could be expected ?

How would other database vendors (Ingres, Oracle, Informix...) 
handle this situation. 

tim@binky.sybase.com (Tim Wood) (01/18/90)

In article <2358@ncr-sd.SanDiego.NCR.COM> stevec@otl.SanDiego.NCR.COM (Steve Chaput) writes:
>
>
>I have a question concerning Sybase configurations.  In a 
>hypothetical situation, we have a Sun dedicated as a Sybase 
>4.0 SQL Server on a LAN.  Assume that we have tuned our server 
>for optimum performance.  However the client application 
>accessing the server requires greater performance.  The client 
>application accesses ATM machines and performs single row 
>updates, inserts, and fetches on a very large table (350MB).  
>We want to dedicate another identical Sun to share the server 
>requests to increase client performance.  We are willing to 
>modify the client application and partition the data between 
>machines. Replication of the data is undesirable. 
>
>How can we decrease the time it takes the client to process n 
>transactions utilizing the additional machine ?  How much of a 
>change could be expected ?
>
>How would other database vendors (Ingres, Oracle, Informix...) 
>handle this situation. 

I think a worthwhile approach would be to increase the concurrency on
the client side.  If your incoming requests are serialized through
the client, the client will probably be saturated before the server.
In an ATM network, the organization for maximum concurrency would be to
have each ATM running its (client) side of the transaction.  That way,
almost all the concurrency arbitration happens in the server, which is
optimized for it.

I say "almost" to allow for network latency.  That can be offset
by connecting the server to several networks and allocating the ATMs
among the networks.  Allocation could be static, or dynamic and decided
for each connection.  For a sufficiently intelligent single network, it will
present a virtual "single network" interface to each end and do good
congestion control.  
-TW
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tim@sybase.com          {pacbell,pyramid,sun,{uunet,ucbvax}!mtxinu}!sybase!tim
		This message is solely my personal opinion.
		It is not a representation of Sybase, Inc.  OK.