Performance optimization for sites based on Content Template Catalog

All of the usual guidance for optimizing IBM WebSphere Portal and IBM Web Content Manager applies to a Content Template Catalog site. We should familiarize yourself with the options available. Apply all of the tuning and optimization recommended in the documentation, including changing appropriate JVM settings, DynaCache settings for IBM Web Content Manager internal caching, and database tuning.

After we have designed and built some of the site, it is important to start examining, testing, and tuning performance. Leaving it to the end of the build phase is often the cause of project delays. Starting early lets us build up a good set of performance goals and test cases we can run repeatedly as function and content are added. You find and fix performance issues early and go into production with confidence the site can handle the load we require.

Another aspect of performance tuning is setting up portlet caching. Portlets are in front of the entire data retrieval and rendering processes. Setting up caching at the portlet level reduces load throughout the entire system. Any requests that can be pulled directly out of this cache means avoiding calls to the Web Content Manager rendering engine, security checks, database access, and so on. By default, the portlets in the page templates and in the palette are not set to cache. As each site is different, we could not set up an appropriate cache set. After doing all of the back-end tuning and getting a baseline performance level, we can start enabling caching on portlets to examine the effect on load tests. Typically on an anonymous website we can set caching almost unilaterally; the difference may be in the timeout period for the cache, with portlets like 'latest items' lists typically having a faster timeout than more static content.

To apply caching across many pages at once, export the pages and add caching parameters to the exported XML, and re-import. We may end up repeating this process a few times as you fine-tune the caching to achieved desired performance levels.

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