Causes of performance problems
There are two main causes of application performance problems:
- Coding problems, where the problem lies in the logic of the application itself.
Poorly written application code can result in redundant or unnecessary work being performed by the application. These are examples of coding problems:
- Inefficient algorithms or algorithms that do not scale well
- Frequent or unnecessary remote invocations, where unchanging data is repeatedly requested rather than cached
- Inefficient SQL queries. Rather than querying the entire data set and performing operations in the logic layer, it might be more efficient to perform logic operations on the database
The performance and problem analysis tools are designed primarily to find and fix coding problems.
- Configuration problems, where the problem is not related to the application, but is caused by external factors.
Factors include...
- insufficient memory
- insufficient processing power
- high latency
- low throughput
- connection problems
- poorly tuned databases
The performance and problem analysis tools are NOT designed primarily to find and fix configuration problems.
Work with system administrator or IT operator to eliminate or rule out configuration problems before attempting to diagnose the application itself. You can also use the resource monitoring functionality in Rational Performance Tester to discover these problems.