Previously I showed you how to run pButtons to start collecting performance metrics that we are looking at in this series of posts.

A few years ago, I was teaching the basics of our %UnitTest framework during Caché Foundations class (now called Developing Using InterSystems Objects and SQL). A student asked if it was possible to collect performance statistics while running unit tests. A few weeks later, I added some additional code to the %UnitTest examples to answer this question. I’m finally sharing it on the Community.

Not everyone knows that InterSystems Caché has a built-in tool for code profiling called Caché Monitor.

Its main purpose (obviously) is the collection of statistics for programs running in Caché. It can provide statistics by program, as well as detailed Line-by-Line statistics for each program.

Using Caché Monitor

Let’s take a look at a potential use case for Caché Monitor and its key features. So, in order to start the profiler, you need to go to the terminal and switch to the namespace that you want to monitor, then launch the %SYS.MONLBL system routine:

Beginning - see Part 1.

3. Variants of structures when using globals

A structure, such as an ordered tree, has various special cases. Let's take a look at those that have practical value for working with globals.

3.1 Special case 1. One node without branches

Like hardware hosts, virtual hosts in public and private clouds can develop resource bottlenecks as workloads increase. If you are using and managing InterSystems IRIS instances deployed in public or private clouds, you may have encountered a situation in which addressing performance or other issues requires increasing the capacity of an instance's host (that is, vertically scaling).

YASPE is the successor to YAPE (Yet Another pButtons Extractor). YASPE has been written from the ground up with many internal changes to allow easier maintenance and enhancements.

YASPE functions:

• Parse and chart InterSystems Caché pButtons and InterSystems IRIS SystemPerformance files for quick performance analysis of Operating System and IRIS metrics.
• Allow a deeper dive by creating ad-hoc charts and by creating charts combining the Operating System and IRIS metrics with the "Pretty Performance" option.
• The "System Overview" option saves you from searching your SystemPerformance files for system details or common configuration options.

YASPE is written in Python and is available on GitHub as source code or for Docker containers at:

• https://github.com/murrayo/yaspe

I am often asked to review customers' IRIS application performance data to understand if system resources are under or over-provisioned.

This recent example is interesting because it involves an application that has done a "lift and shift" migration of a large IRIS database application to the Cloud. AWS, in this case.

A key takeaway is that once you move to the Cloud, resources can be right-sized over time as needed. You do not have to buy and provision on-premises infrastructure for many years in the future that you expect to grow into.

Continuous monitoring is required. Your application transaction rate will change as your business changes, the application use or the application itself changes. This will change the system resource requirements. Planners should also consider seasonal peaks in activity. Of course, an advantage of the Cloud is resources can be scaled up or down as needed.

For more background information, there are several in-depth posts on AWS and IRIS in the community. A search for "AWS reference" is an excellent place to start. I have also added some helpful links at the end of this post.

AWS services are like Lego blocks, different sizes and shapes can be combined. I have ignored networking, security, and standing up a VPC for this post. I have focused on two of the Lego block components;
- Compute requirements.
- Storage requirements.

Often InterSystems technology architect team is asked about recommended storage arrays or storage technologies. To provide this information to a wider audience as reference, a new series is started to provide some of the results we have encountered with various storage technologies. As a general recommendation, all-flash storage is highly recommended with all InterSystems products to provide the lowest latency and predictable IOPS capabilities.

The first in the series was the most recently tested Netapp AFF A300 storage array. This is middle-tier type storage array with several higher models above it. This specific A300 model is capable of supporting a minimal configuration of only a few drives to hundreds of drives per HA pair, and also capable of being clustered with multiple controller pairs for tens of PB's of disk capacity and hundreds of thousands of IOPS or higher.

Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) is a feature of Windows that allows you to run a Linux environment on your Windows machine, without the need for a separate virtual machine or dual booting.

WSL is designed to provide a seamless and productive experience for developers who want to use both Windows and Linux at the same time**.

Often times support and sales engineers are asked about recent benchmark results on various platforms and large scale configurations. These will be made available here in the Developer Community in the "Documentation" section, and as an example here's a link to a recent Intel E7 v2 series processor benchmark.

https://community.intersystems.com/documentation/data-scalability-intersystems-caché-and-intel-processors-0

Code coverage and performance optimization of code has come up a bunch of times already, so most of you should already be aware of the SYS.MONLBL utility.

There are often questions surrounding the ideal Apache HTTPD Web Server configuration for HealthShare. The contents of this article will outline the initial recommended web server configuration for any HealthShare product.

As a starting point, Apache HTTPD version 2.4.x (64-bit) is recommended. Earlier versions such as 2.2.x are available, however version 2.2 is not recommended for performance and scalability of HealthShare.

Sometimes, it comes in very handy (especially for the EAV model) to use array properties in a class and be able to qickly search by their elements: both the key and the value.

Let’s take a look at a simple example:

What is APM?

I am talking about Application Performance Management at global summit, and several people have asked what that means so it is time for a bit of an explanation.

APM or Application Performance Management (sometimes referred to as Application Performance Monitoring) has a very good (if complicated) explanation on Wikipedia but to me it just means looking at performance from the users’ point of view and the level of service provided to them.