Tuning SPECjAppServer2002

Components

Application Server: data source configuration

Correctly configuring a data source can be very important to performance. The size of the Data Source Connection Pool is generally tied to the IR being run. The normal formula to use, to size the connection pool, is to take the IR and multiply it by 8 and then add 10% of the result. For example, an IR of 10 run would require 10  8 = 80, then add 10% of 80 which comes out to 88. Make sure you set the <min-pool-size> and <max-pool-size> to the same value.

Sometimes you can get by on fewer database connections, but the <blocking-timeout-millis> element needs to be enabled, in this situation, to prevent transactions from failing due to a wait timeout for a database connection. The default value for this parameter, if not specified, is 30,000 (30 seconds). This might be too keen in some situations. A value of 60,000 (1 minute) is a good starting point for this setting and may need to be increased the further the Connection Pool size is decreased.

Make sure that you include a <prepared-statement-cache-size> so that database statement caches can be utilized. A value of 200 is adequate for this benchmark.