Beginning JavaServer Pages™

Chapter 25. Performance

Performance is very important for Web applications. Even if your application has a lot of useful functionality and an elegant user interface, your users may still not use it if they have to wait a long time for a Web page to load.

This chapter covers the following issues relating to the performance of Web applications:

• The meaning of performance as it applies to a Web application

• Measuring the performance of a Web application.

• Investigating the reasons behind performance bottlenecks in your Web application

• Some common mechanisms to improve performance

Performance tuning is a complex area. For a Web application deployed in an enterprise, many of the factors that affect performance are often outside the application itself. These factors may include the network configuration and hardware platform characteristics, the operating system settings, Java virtual machine parameters, database tuning parameters, and the architecture of the Web application itself.

Naturally, everything that affects performance cannot be covered here. The objective of this chapter is to introduce you to performance measurement and tuning concepts, give you a hands-on feel for some of the tools used for performance measurement, and cover those areas of JSP development and deployment that affect performance.

Performance Concepts

What does performance mean for a Web site? From a user's perspective, the performance of a Web site boils down to how fast (or how slow) the Web pages load. As a Web developer, ...