Performance Optimization Services

OK, so you have the database running now, but is it running at it's fastest rate possible?

The Btrieve database engine can support many users with many concurrent transactions. Many application developers avoid Btrieve transactions because they impose some programming overhead & slow the system down. At least one company, MACESS Corporation, has overcome these limitations with special-purpose programming to handle the details correctly. Under peak loads, we have seen their servers handle in excess of 950 users concurrently, all heavily using Btrieve-level transactions. Other sites have peaked above the 1200-concurrent-user mark on the Pervasive database engine!

The Pervasive database engine can also handle tremendous throughput volume coming from multiple users. Seeing servers handling in excess of 5000 operations per second is not unusual, and newer boxes can easily handle many times that volume.

Can the Pervasive database handle the size of your database? Each file in Pervasive PSQL v9.5 file format can grow to a whopping 256GB in size (up from 64GB in V7/V8, and from 4GB in Btrieve 6.15). As most databases are comprised of multiple files, this offers the potential for very large databases indeed. The largest single-server databases (that we have seen) run well into the 140GB+ range. We've also worked with multi-server environments spanning as many as 6 servers for performance scaling.

When you talk of sites running databases of this size successfully, you must also realize that they have specially tuned the hardware and software configurations to maximize throughput. Many have started leveraging the power of the 64-bit engine to keep more data in memory at all times, with servers using 128GB of memory not being uncommon. (This is amazing, since when we started working with Btrieve in the early 90's, a server with 128MB of RAM was considered a lot!) Some sites have also started to leverage solid state disk hardware to optimize data I/O throughput, as well. In several cases, we have also been able to help a user make software modifications -- changes to the application design itself -- to maintain the high levels of activity and throughput required. In any event, it DOES work!

What is the key to all of this? Really, it all centers on understanding how the application works, how the database works, how the OS works, and how the network works. Goldstar Software can work with you to analyze the existing performance levels of your entire environment and help identify where gains can be found to improve speed , throughput, or reliability. Contact us today for more information about our on-site and Internet-based performance optimization services!