CASE STUDY #2

CPT Capacity and Performance Tuning

A Government Agency – Cool:Gen / DB2 application

CPT Global has taken responsibility and accountability for the performance assurance of a major application currently under development at a Canberra-based Government agency. The CPT team has been able to bring its specialist service offerings including performance tuning, application architecture and design, DB2 and Cool:Gen performance analysis and capacity planning to the application project.

Initially, CPT was engaged to assist with defining the hardware and software configuration of mainframe resource requirements. During this initial work, CPT identified the need to raise the profile within the project to manage the performance risks of the application under development. Recognizing the risks, the project engaged CPT to conduct a series of reviews that in turn led to the improved performance of the application.

The breadth of CPT experience gained from its work at other sites, especially relating to the DB2 / Cool:Gen interface, is unique and has brought significant benefits to the project including:

• The identification of potential performance bottlenecks with critical batch and online processes. The database under development used random key generation that was identified as a major performance issue in the database design. CPT has recommended changes to the random key generation with keys that are more appropriate to government agency’s data processing. Since the project has moved into the Function test phase, a number of the initial issues raised by CPT were proven to be performance issues during function testing. Tuning of these processes has now commenced under CPT guidance; 

• The implementation of established CPT tracking methodologies, known as the Opportunity Log and supporting processes, have helped to log, prioritize, schedule and track the progress of the Performance Tuning issues through the application life cycle. In short, the team has brought focus and management leadership to integrate the sometimes conflicting performance issues with the application development agendas; 

• Cool:gen and DB2 development for performance. Within the government agency CPT has run a series of briefings to educate and enlighten the development team about programming Cool:gen for maximum performance. These briefings included a more formal session with CPT’s performance specialists who conducted a presentation style session allowing for questions and answers; 

• The delivery of Capacity Plans that estimate the forecast CPU and Storage requirements for the redeveloped application. Although the application is still under development, CPT has been able to use its experience to estimate resource requirements providing a valuable tool for all stakeholders to better manage expectations and provision accordingly. The estimates will be revised as the development continues; 

• The CPT team’s experience as lead consultants and DBA specialists in the deployment of large-scale DB2 systems. This experience of managing leading technical teams in analysis of specific inherent performance risks of DB2/Cool:gen from other sites was not previously available to the client team prior to the engagement of CPT; and 

• Order of magnitude improvements in elapsed time for the key batch process by a combination of design recommendations and SQL tuning.