Java Enterprise Best Practices

Improving Application Performance

The practices outlined in this section focus on client performance. That is, we assume there is a client application, probably being used by an end user, which talks to a server using RMI. The goal of these practices is to improve both the performance and the perceived performance of the client application.

Perceived performance is a strange thing. The goal in improving perceived performance is improving application responsiveness. That is, when the user clicks a button, the application does the right thing, and it does the right thing quickly. Most practices that improve performance also improve perceived performance. But the converse is not true—improving application responsiveness can actually degrade overall performance, or at least cause the server to work harder. But that’s often a price worth paying if it means the end user is happier.

Tip

This section isn’t as RMI-specific as the previous two sections because, when you get right down to it, all enterprise applications have a fairly similar structure, and a lot of optimization practices are fairly general.