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Performance and OBIEE part I Introduction


March 18th, 2013 by Robin Moffatt

Performance matters. Performance really matters. And performance can actually be easy, but it takes some thinking about. It
cant be brute-forced, or learnt by rote, or solved in a list of Best Practices, Silver Bullets and fairy dust.
The problem with performance is that it is too easy to guess and sometimes strike lucky, to pick at a Best Practice Tuning
setting that by chance matches an issue on your system. This leads people down the path of thinking that performance is
just about tweaking parameters, tuning settings, and twiddling knobs. The trouble with trusting this magic beans approach is
that down this path leads wasted time, system instability, uncertainty, and insanity. Your fix that worked on another system
might work this time, or a setting you find in a Best Practice document might work. But would it not be better to know that it
would?
I wanted to write this series of posts as a way of getting onto paper how I think analysing and improving performance in
OBIEE should be done and why. It is intended to address the very basic question of how do we improve the performance of
OBIEE. Lots of people work with OBIEE, and many of them will have lots of ideas about performance, but not all have a clear
picture of how to empirically test and improve performance.

Why does performance matter?

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Why does performance matter? Why are some people (me) so obsessed with testing and timing and tuning things? Cant
we just put the system live and see how it goes, since it seems fast enough in Dev?

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Slow systems upset users. No-one likes to be kept waiting. If youre withdrawing cash from an ATM, youre going to be
quite cross if it takes five minutes. In fact, a pause of five seconds will probably get you fidgeting.
Once users dislike a system, regaining their favour is an uphill battle. Trust is hard to win and easily lost. One of the
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as hard to get them to simply recognise a small improvement. You not only have to fix the performance problem, you also
have to win round the user again and prove that it is genuinely faster.

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From a cost point of view, poorly performing systems are inefficient:


They waste hardware resource, increasing the machine capacity required, decreasing the time between hardware

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upgrades
They cost more to support, particularly as performance bottlenecks can cause unpredictable stability issues
They cost more to maintain, in two ways. Firstly, each quick-win used in an attempt to resolve the problem will
probably add to the complexity or maintenance overhead of the system. Secondly, a proper resolution of the problem
may involve a redesign on such a scale that it can become a rewrite of the entire system in all but name.
They cost more to use. User waiting = user distracted = less efficient at his job. Eventually, User waiting =

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Connecting OBIEE 11.1.1.7 to


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disgruntled user = poor system usage and support from the business.

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Why performance matters to the techie

obiee odi odi12c

Performance is not a fire-and-forget task, and box on a checklist. It has many facets and places in a projects life cycle.

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Done properly, you will have confidence in the performance of your system, knowledge of the
limits of its capacity, a better understanding of the workings of it, and a repeatable process

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for validating any issues that arise or prospective configuration changes.

Information Discovery ow b

Done badly, or not at all, you might hit lucky and not have
any performance problems for a while. But when they do
happen, youll be starting from a position of ignorance, trying to learn at speed and under
pressure how to diagnose and resolve the problems. Silver bullets appear enticing and
get fired at the problem in the vain hope that one will work. Time will be wasted chasing

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red herrings. You have no real handle on how much capacity your server has for an
increasing user base. Version upgrades fill you with fear of the unknown. You dont dare
change your system for fear of upsetting the performance goblin lest he wreak havoc.
Building a good system is not just about one which cranks out the correct numbers. A
good system is one which not only cranks out the good numbers, but performs well when
it does so. Performance is a key component of any system design.

OBIEE and Performance


Gone are the days of paper reports, when a user couldnt judge the
performance of a computer system except by whether the paper reports were
on their desk by 0800 on Monday morning. Now, users are more and more
technologically aware. They are more aware of the concept and power of data.
Most will have smartphones and be used to having their email, music and
personal life at the finger-swipe of a screen. They know how fast computers can
work.
One of the many strengths of OBIEE is that it enables self-service BI. The
challenge that this gives us is that users will typically expect their dashboards
and analyses to run as fast as all their other interactions with technology. A

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slow system risks being an unsuccessful system, as users will be impatient,


frustrated, even angry with it.
Below I propose an approach, a method, which will support the testing and
tuning of the performance of OBIEE during all phases of a project. Every method
must have a silly TLA or catchy name, and this one is no different.

Fancy a brew? Introducing T.E.A., the OBIEE Performance Method


In working with performance one of the most important things is to retain a structured and logical approach to it. Here is mine:
1. Test creation
A predefined, repeatable, workload
2. Execute and Measure
Run the test and collect data
3. Analyse
Analyse the test results, and if necessary apply a change to the system which is then validated through a repeat of
the cycle

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The emphasis is on this method being applicable at any time in a systems lifecycle, not just the Performance Test phase.
Here are a few examples to put it in context:
1. Formal performance test stage of a project
1. Test : define and build a set of tests simulating users, including at high concurrency
2. Execute and Measure: run test and collect detailed statistics about system profile
3. Analyse : check for bottlenecks, diagnose, redesign or reconfigure system and retest
2. Continual Monitoring of performance
1. Test could be a standard prebuilt report with known run time (i.e. a baseline)
2. Execute could be just when the report gets run on demand, or a scheduled version of the report for monitoring
purposes. Measure just the response time, alongside standard OS metrics
3. Analyse collect response times to track trends, identify problems before they escalate. Provides a baseline

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3. Analyse collect response times to track trends, identify problems before they escalate. Provides a baseline
against which to test changes
3. Troubleshooting a performance problem
1. Test could be existing reports with known performance times taken from OBIEEs Usage Tracking data
2. Execute Rerun reports and measure response times and detailed system metrics
3. Analyse Diagnose root cause, fix and retest

Re-inventing the wheel


T.E.A. is nothing new in the overall context of Performance. It is almost certainly in existence elsewhere under another name
or guise. I have deliberately split it into three separate parts to make it easier to work with in the context of OBIEE. The OBIEE
stack is relatively complex and teasing apart the various parts for consideration has to be done carefully. For example,
designing how we generate the test against OBIEE should be done in isolation from how we are going to monitor it. Both
have numerous ways of doing so, and in several places can interlink. The most important thing is that theyre initially
considered separately.
The other reason for defining my own method is that I wanted to get something in writing on which I can then hang my
various OBIEE-specific performance rants without being constrained by the terminology of another method.

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Whats to come
This series of articles is split into the following :
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.

Introduction (this page)


Test Define
Test Design
Test Build
Execute
Analyse
Optimise
Summary and FAQ

Im tempted to hyperlink these in the fashion of Choose Your Own Adventure and if you click straight from here onto the last
section, Optimise, without having read the other parts first, it will redirect you back to them ;-)

Comments?
Id love your feedback. Do you agree with this method, or is it a waste of time? What have I overlooked or overemphasised?
Am I flogging a dead horse?
Because there are several articles in this series, and Id like to keep the thread of comments in one place, Ive enabled
comments on the summary and FAQ post here, and disabled comments on the others.

Related Posts:
Performance and OBIEE part IV Test Build
Performance and OBIEE part III Test Design
Built-In OBIEE Load Testing with nqcmd
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Mark Rittman
Venkat J
Peter Scott
Borkur S
Mike Vickers
Robin Moffatt
Jon Mead

Rittman Mead Consulting ltd.


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