Database performance management - the importance of time-based analysis
Date:
By: Philip Howard
Classification: White Paper
Ultimately, the only performance that matters
in a computer system is how long it takes to
respond to a user’s request for information or,
en masse, how long it takes to respond to all
users’ requests. Given that this is the case, and
we would argue that it is logically obvious, then
the only sensible way to monitor the way the
performance of any particular system is to
measure the amount of time it takes to respond
to those requests.
Having said that, historically, most performance
monitoring tools, especially when it comes to
the database performance monitoring with
which we are concerned in this paper, have not
measured how long it takes to do things but
instead have focused on counting the number of
things that have to be done. In this paper we
argue that such an approach is inadequate and
that a time-based approach is not only more
intuitive but is also more effective, not just in
monitoring performance per se but also in
identifying the root cause of any problems that
may arise.
Specifically, this paper discusses the various
issues that surround database performance
monitoring and how we believe that they should
be addressed. Having identified the
characteristics that you should be looking for in
such a system we then go on to describe a
solution, the Igniter Suite from Confio Software,
that meets these characteristics.