Summary

This chapter focused on optimization of WebLogic applications. Performance is an issue that should be dealt with at the design, implementation, and deployment phases. Developers should not wait until months have been spent coding to decide that the performance of their code should be tested. There are open source performance tools that even those on the tightest budgets can afford.

Before you attempt to load-balance and optimize your completed applications, make sure that everyone involved with the application—including business development, sales, customer service, and so on—is using the same metrics to quantify performance (for example, average response time) and that they all agree on the same quantities of acceptable performance (for example, MART should be 3 seconds or less).

When this has occurred, a performance and tuning strategy needs to be worked out before any load testing or tuning occurs. If you don't have the whole picture worked out beforehand, chances are that you will be repeating load tests and tuning sessions unnecessarily.

After a strategy has been decided upon, play with the application to get a sense of how it responds and where it might have performance issues. Then create some load-balancing tests that simulate actual users. Benchmark the application with these tests and use the tools that are at your disposal to correct performance problems that show themselves.