Performance

Engineering
Services

Service-Oriented Architectures (SOAs) present unique challenges for performance engineers. While SOA can make it easier to integrate diverse applications it can also cause disruptions in operations. Characteristics of SOAs that can negatively impact performance include:

• Software services that may change frequently and without warning
• End-to-end transaction paths that change based on a variety of (known and unknown) factors
• Software services that exhibit variable response times or do not respond at all
• Complex interactions across multiple platforms that make it difficult to diagnose and repair problems
• Components that appear to deliver adequate performance in isolation but do not perform well when integrated into an overall application
• Mismatches between interfaces, particularly when heavy weight and light weight services are mixed

What can you do to help insure that your SOA applications meet your service level agreements (SLAs)?

• Take an end-to-end view of transactions — Using an end-to-end view will help prevent situations where components exhibit adequate performance in isolation but not when integrated with other components.
• Understand the business view — One of the benefits of SOA is its support for streamlining business processes. If an individual transaction response time is not adequate in the context of the business processes that the application supports, then adjustments must be made.
• Understand the overall topology of the application — Where a service executes can have a significant impact on the response time experienced by your users.
• Establish SOA measurement and reporting capabilities
— Services may have variable performance depending on how and when they are called. This is especially true of external services. You need to be able to dynamically and selectively monitor end-to-end response times as well as the response of individual services to manage overall performance.
• Establish a performance baseline — Establishing a performance baseline will help you quickly identify problems.
• Take a life cycle view of performance — Best-in-class SOA organizations take a lifecycle view of performance, integrating SPE into all phases of the software development process.

Our extensive experience in performance and software architecture/development uniquely qualifies us to help you gain control of the performance of your existing SOA applications and prevent problems as new SOA applications are developed.

Contact us today to learn how you can enhance the performance of your SOA applications.