Performance Analysis & Tuning

Performance of any system is defined as "accomplishment of a 'task' measured against agreed quality, cost and time."

The software tasks are primarily divided into "transactional" tasks and "analytical" tasks.

One big area in Software Systems management is the Performance Analysis and Tuning.

How to measure the performance?
The basic thing needed for "Performance" is the "Measurement" - What is to be measured and How?
Generally people measure the "response time" (time taken to complete the task) if the task is transactional
and
throughput (number of tasks performed in a fixed unit of time) if the task is analytical.

So, in both the cases what is measured is "time". What happened to the original definition that consisted the "quality" and "cost"?

In Software systems the "tasks" are automated and once the automation is tested well, "quality" is guaranteed for the task.
The "cost" of performing the automated task of a software application is the computing resources (CPU and memory) that are allocated to the application and how well the application can use additional resources to carryout the tasks.

Assuming the application can take full advantage of available CPU and Memory resources allocated to it, "TIME" becomes the best measure to analyze the performance of a software system.

How to Tune the system?
Reduce the amount of time taken to perform the 'task'. As simple as that.

Is it that simple?
Let us take a close look at this approach. Can we really reduce the time taken to perform a task?
Answer is "NO". If a task takes "x" amount of seconds to do, it takes "x" seconds to finish it.
But,
Every Software task has two components of this "time". What are they?
a. The time taken to actually DO the work
b. The time taken while waiting for a dependent sub-task to get completed.

So, Now if we ask the same question Can we reduce the time taken to perform a task?
The answer is YES - by reducing the time "waiting"!

Performance Tuning is all about scheduling and executing the sub-tasks of a "task" optimally such that the waiting time is minimized (if not completely removed) thereby using the available resources optimally and reducing the "cost" of performing the "task" That is the secret of performance tuning!