Database performance

we need a lot more information than you have provided. What sort of disks do you have ? What is the memory size ? CPU speed ?

Oh, you should also be upgrading to 10.1 at the very least. 9.1 is a old release.

In particular, you should include:

• The observed problem, not the metric, but the nature of the observed difficulties -- all the time, peaks of poor performance, non-responsiveness, individual processes which are slow, etc.

• Specifics of user count, DB size, layout, memory, etc.

• Startup parameters

• What you have already tried and what effect it had

• Figures from promon ... which tells you much more about what the DB is doing than any OS statistics. Note that 24 hour samples are generally meaningless unless you are a 24 hour shop. Much better to take a number of 5 or 10 minute samples at various times in the day.

• Have you considered ProTop?

Thanks for the replies.

First of all we cannot update to 10.1 as the software front end for the database we use doesnt support it, untill our software provider supports 10.1 we are stuck with 9.1

our server is

dual 3ghz Xeon

4gb RAM

2x 74gb? SCSI on mirror raid

usercount averages 15 users

DB size is 25gb

Database buffer size is 800mb i think

there is so many variables here i dunno where to start or where to look in trouble shooting as im still very new to Progress and Servers, ive only ever had experiance with desktops my entire IT life.

The database itself is an absolute mess, the data is currently stored in the scheme for some reason, the entire 25gb DB is on the same HD as windows and its mirrored which is a not helping. The design of the database is piss poor at best, our database was originally installed out of the box, no modifications to increase performance (our quality software provider)

Im planning to have the DB moved to a seperate RAID ASAP, im wondering whats the best raid setup? 1+0 to have redundancy aswell as speed increase?

As far as the observed difficulties, when 1 person runs a report, its slows the entire system, if 2 people run reports eberything basically comes to a grinding halt untill the report is done.

Our database and our business runs 24/7 which is why i took a 24 hour sample, to see the average of loads and when the DB is at its busiest.

Sorry for my lack of info but i just dunno what sort of stats i should include, ill do a bit of digging and get some more info and post it in the next day or so.

thanks again

1) DB Performance is a complex topic...

2) You might want to consider posting questions about it in the "OpenEdge RDBMS & Data Management" forum. I suspect that The Engine Crew is more likely to notice your posts there.

3) The PEG DBA forum is also a very good source of advice on Progress DB Tuning.

4) I'm sorry to hear that you're running Windows but, luckily, we can work around that

5) You don't sound very happy about your vendor so why be stuck with 9.1? If you can compile code you can almost certainly upgrade whether they like it or not.

6) Basic tuning can go a long ways to improve your situation. But as Thomas indicated we need some data to work with. ProTop is your friend:

http://www.greenfieldtech.com/

7) There is a lot that can be done with storage area configuration that can improve your performance. Take a look at this for some ideas:

http://www.greenfieldtech.com/articles/storage_areas.shtml

8) Not to turn this into an add or anything but a good training class or a few days of a good DBA consultant's time would go a long ways too.