The Data Access Handbook: Achieving Optimal Database Application Performance and Scalability

The Data Access Handbook: Achieving Optimal Database Application Performance and Scalability
Authors
John Goodson, Robert A. Steward
ISBN
0137143931
Published
26 Mar 2009
Purchase online
amazon.com

The Data Access HandbookAchieving Optimal Database Application Performance and ScalabilityJohn Goodson • Robert A. StewardDrive breakthrough database application performance by optimizing middleware and connectivityPerformance and scalability are more critical than ever in today’s enterprise database applications, and traditional database tuning isn’t nearly enough to solve the performance problems you are likely to see in those applications.

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  1. Editorial Reviews
  2. Customer Reviews

Customer Reviews

Happy Camper said
I recently attended a webcast which introduced me to this book. The example given in the webcast from the book was solid and well founded example CPU, memory, and performance tuning for data access. That good information prompted me to look and purchase the book.

Pros:
Good information, good examples, detailed analysis, and nearly complete all-round. Good middle-ware background. Very easy read and good future reference.

Cons:
Repetitive information, examples, and case studies with looping "see page xyz". Benchmarking, about 20 pages long, could be extended to include network, CPU, disk, and other load testing, analysis, and tuning tools.

W Boudville said
Many books about relational databases go into considerable details about optimising the use. Like the way you build the tables and how they are interrelated and joined. In contrast, Goodson and Steward describe a different type of optimisation. Here there are at least 2 computers. On 1 runs your application, while on the other is the database it uses. The application talks to a database driver on its machine, and the driver makes the network conversation with the database. The book describes ways to better configure the application's use of the driver.

The key recommendations are thus:

Reduce the number of network connections. Network delays can be considerable, especially if the machines are far apart.

Reduce the amount of data returned over the network by the database. Discard fields [columns] in rows that are unlikely to be needed by the user; all the more so if the fields are large, like images. If the results are large, it takes time to convert these into network packets and then to reassemble the packets on the application machine. Here the penalty is in the time taken on the database server to find the results, the time to transmit these, and the time to reassemble them on your machine.

There are more recommendations, but the 2 above seem the most important. The book goes into details about the others. It also has a useful chapter towards the end where several scenarios of actual non-optimal situations are given, along with the causes and resolutions. Worth careful reading for you to get inspiration and possibly clues about your situation.

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