Chapter 11: WebSphere Database Performance and Optimization

As you've seen during earlier chapters of this book, the database is probably the next most important component within a WebSphere application environment after the application server itself. In this chapter, you'll learn ways to improve the overall performance of your WebSphere integration with a relational database.

WebSphere Database Overview

A vast proportion of WebSphere-based environments globally operate with some form of backend database. The reason why isn't complex. Consider for a moment the crux of most WebSphere application environments. They provide a service to customers and end users, typically via a Web medium (some via other means such as thick Java clients ) in one of three categories:

• Order and sales

• Services and provisioning

• Information presentation

Order and sales WebSphere-based applications are sites such as Amazon and eBay. Services and provisioning cover features such as Internet banking and Business-to-Business (B2B) commerce, and information presentation covers services such as those provided by Google, Webcasts, and Internet news sites. If you consider each of these examples, you should be able to picture how and where you'll integrate a database.

Don't get me wrong ”they're not a necessity, but databases are common WebSphere environment components . Remember, you may be running a WebSphere 5 system that doesn't need to run a database for a repository ”you may want to run a Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP) server instead. Some of the previous examples may work fine with an LDAP implementation.

Either way, it's important to understand how to optimize WebSphere and a relational database to ensure that you maximize your end-to-end performance. Remember, the sum of the overall WebSphere environment's performance is only as good as the lowest performing component.