Loosely Coupled

It's been close to 2 months since my first Performance Tuning JCAPS post. Since then, we've noticed our servers running out of TCP connections under heavy load. Researching this problem, we learned that the JCAPS' JMS server makes heavy use of TCP in implementing Request/Reply queues . We approached Sun for guidance and they assured us that they've had success implementing high throughput applications using the JMS request reply solution... but how? It appears a multi-step solution is needed. First, running out of TCP connections in a scenario like ours is a JCAPS bug addressed in an ESR (110348) and rolled into JCAPS 5.1.3 Update Release 3 . We installed this update and noticed a marked improvement. Running my simple 75 user simulated test, transactions took 2521 ms to round trip (compared to the previous time of 20128ms). While this is great improvement, an average of 2.5 seconds is still really slow for this simple transaction. We reported our findings to Su

Software development is complex. A lot of communication is needed to coordinate with users and between teams to synchronize efforts. On large teams developing distributed systems, effective communication is exponentially harder. In addition to the users and development teams, you also need to deal with system admins, DBAs, network, and change control specialists. In many environments, this later group of people (the system admins, DBAs, etc.) do not get involved with the project until late stages. The development team might have free reign over development databases for instance, but when the code migrates to a certification environment things are suddenly very different. Teams move from surroundings where they have total control of machine settings, databases, and resources to an environment where they have none. Often, during the migration to a test or production environment things are often "forgotten". Things that often don't make it into an application's ch

Good things always have that "secret sauce" - the element that sets it apart from the pack and makes it better than anything else. The "secret sauce" takes something ordinary and makes it extraordinary. It's a Mac vs. a laptop. Disney World vs. a theme park. A Big Mac vs. a hamburger. When I hear company execs talk about what sets their companies apart, it seems there's no real "secret" to the sauce after all. It boils down to hard work and a commitment to your customers. A commitment to a better user experience. A commitment to treating every guest interaction "special". A commitment to a good hamburger every time. There's not a magic switch you can flip... it's a commitment to excellence through hard work. Looking for a shortcut to this kind of success is a waste of time. All too often I've seen software development teams look for magic switches rather than commit to the hard work of fixing the underlying problem.