PC Client Performance

Oracle E-Business Suite 11i and 12
PC Client Performance
An Oracle White Paper

October 2007
Oracle E-Business Suite 11i and 12
PC Client Performance
Executive Overview .......................................................................................... 5

Why Not Just Skip to the Results? ............................................................. 5
Introduction ....................................................................................................... 6
The Importance of the Holistic Approach ............................................... 6
Oracle Client Recommendations................................................................ 7
The Testing Methodology ................................................................................ 8
Creating a List of Test Candidate Transactions........................................ 8
The Test Environment and Testing Issues ............................................... 9
Testing Accuracy .........................................................................................11
PC Clients Used in these Tests .................................................................11
Windows Memory Definitions and Measurement Tools ..........................12
Different Types of Memory ......................................................................12
Choosing a Tool to Measure Memory.................................................13
Choosing Which Memory to Measure ................................................16
Process Trimming .......................................................................................19
Rules of Thumb – Private Bytes and Working Set ................................20
Understanding the Browser Memory Offset and Scaling Results ............21
How to Map Integrated Browser Components......................................22
Adobe Acrobat Reader, Skype, and the Google Toolbar.................22
Microsoft Phishing Option ...................................................................24
Factors That Affect the Browser Memory Footprint............................24
Deciding How To Scale Results ...............................................................25
Baseline the Browser Memory Offset .................................................25
Decide Which Scaled Approach to Use..............................................25
Oracle E-Business Suite 12 – The Results...................................................27
Comparing Browsers and Oracle E-Business Suite Components .......28
Average Memory by Oracle E-Business Suite Component Type........31
Reviewing the Ratio of Working Set and Private Bytes ........................31
Comparing Menu Memory Utilization.....................................................33
Comparing Memory Profiles across a Range of Clients........................34
Comparing Load Times for across the Range of Clients ......................35
Comparing Load Times across Fast Clients .......................................36
Comparing Reload Times......................................................................37
Comparing Load Times and Jar File Volumes...................................38
Network Traffic for Oracle E-Business Suite 12 with JRE..................39
Comparing Oracle E-Business Suite 11i and 12 .........................................42
The Effect of Business Flows in Oracle E-Business Suite 11i and 12 42
Comparing Working Set for Oracle E-Business Suite 11i and 12 .......43
Oracle E-Business Suite 11i and 12 PC Client Performance Page 3

Comparing Oracle JInitiator 1.3.1.29 with Sun JRE 1.5.0_12..............44
Recommendations For Low Specification Clients .....................................45
Is a Low Specification Client Usable? ......................................................46
Controlling the User Environment ..........................................................46
The Low-Specification Client Checklist ..................................................46
Memory Optimizers ...............................................................................49
So, How Much Memory Does my Application Need? .........................49
More Testing Tips.......................................................................................49
Conclusion........................................................................................................50
Appendix A: OAF/HTML Screens and Forms Used in the Tests .....52
Appendix B: Tuning the Client .................................................................55
Appendix C: Windows Memory Internals...............................................57

EXECUTIVE OVERVIEW
It often makes financial sense to extend the operational life of IT equipment. This
Extending the useful life of older PC
paper provides guidelines on how to improve performance and thereby possibly
clients can often be cost-effective, even if
they have been fully depreciated. extend the useful life of slow or low-memory PC clients. It identifies specific
scenarios where the difference between low and high specification clients makes very
little difference to end-user performance, and answers the important question of
whether you need to upgrade memory, CPU, or both. This paper compares Oracle
E-Business Suite 11i and 12 using certified browsers, Oracle JInitiator 1.3.1.29
(Oracle E-Business Suite 11i only) with the Sun Java2 Standard Edition Java
Runtime Engine 1.5.0_12 on a range of PC client configurations using Windows XP.
Upgrading to the latest and fastest machines helps provide the best performance, but
the latest technology tends to command a price premium. The costs involved may be
disproportionate to the business gain and the performance may be substantially
more than strictly necessary to support the business. Budgetary constraints and asset
life dictate that the price/performance goal is to balance the return on investment
while providing reasonable longevity. Although the cost of hardware continues to
diminish, the time needed to upgrade a range of machines can be prohibitive,
especially when multiple geographic locations are involved.
The information in this paper will help you make informed decisions to establish the
minimum requirements for a specific price-performance point, and identify a specific
configuration that will achieve the throughput necessary to support your business.
The approach, tools, and observations provide a quantifiable basis for desktop
upgrade decisions that enable you to determine a suitable specification for a PC
client. This can be benchmarked with your particular set of applications in a range of
heterogeneous environments to ensure its suitability and performance.
Extending the concepts presented in the The Holistic Approach to Performance Tuning
The holistic approach provides a
Oracle E-Business Suite whitepaper, this paper applies a holistic approach and
foundation for a cost-benefit analysis and
a quantifiable basis for desktop upgrade considers all the salient facts that may affect performance. This provides a
decisions. foundation for a cost-benefit analysis between zero-cost options, upgrading the
hardware as a one-off cost, and the on-going costs incurred from improvements to
the network infrastructure.
Why Not Just Skip to the Results?

You can find a plethora of definitions for every aspect of Windows terminology
A basic understanding of what is being
across the Internet, some right, some incomplete, and some wrong. The definitions
measured is essential for a meaningful
review of the comparisons and charts. used in this paper are very precise, and this necessitates some complexity and
discussion around Windows memory management. A basic understanding of what is
being measured is essential for a meaningful review of the comparisons and charts.

INTRODUCTION
While this paper focuses on low specification clients, some customers will already
have sufficient hardware in place, but will be concerned about their ability to support
the business at some point in the future. Even if you have what would normally be
considered a high-specification machine, you may still encounter memory problems
when running several applications simultaneously, so the ideas and concepts
presented here are still relevant.
As this paper cannot cover all the permutations and combinations of applications
that you could be running, it provides a comprehensive approach and describes the
tools that you can use to profile the application and Windows environment.
Microsoft state that adding memory makes a significant difference to Windows
performance and this is also true for some Oracle E-Business Suite components.
This statement does not mention CPU speed, and therefore it appears that they
consider this less significant. Consequently, this paper includes data points from a
range of PC clients that will help validate whether or not additional memory alone is
likely to improve performance sufficiently.
This paper does not discuss Windows Vista or Sun Java2 Standard Edition Java
Runtime Engine 1.6. Certification with the Oracle E-Business Suite is planned and
details will be included in a later revision of the paper.
The Importance of the Holistic Approach

Understanding where and how the machines will be deployed is just a starting point
The holistic approach provides a
and adopting a holistic approach is essential. In addition to considering factors that
foundation for a cost-benefit analysis and
a quantifiable basis for desktop upgrade affect your tests directly, such as the other applications that will be used on the
decisions. client, you also need to consider key transactions that are necessary to support the
business, simulation and modeling of the network, and whether some performance
issues are a result of other factors such as application tier or database performance.
It is very unlikely that this paper could match the exact combination of Oracle E-
Business Suite components with the specific combination of software that you use
on the same specification client, in addition to modeling specific network scenarios.
Therefore, the rationale of this paper is to provide examples of Oracle E-Business
Suite components and an approach that you can use in your own environment.
In addition to providing benchmarks for the range of machines that you would
Including a client below the minimum
expect to deploy, this paper also includes a very low-specification client (below the
recommendation provides insights to the
performance of specialized clients that are recommendation for the Oracle E-Business Suite) as a checkpoint and control. The
difficult or expensive to upgrade. memory on this client could not be upgraded, but the information may be useful, for
example, for rugged machines typically used in hostile environments that may be
exceptionally difficult or expensive to upgrade.

Oracle Client Recommendations
Oracle has traditionally taken the same approach as Microsoft by specifying the
minimum desktop client recommendations. While the official specifications offer a
useful starting point, as shown in Table 1, the ultimate decision of what constitutes
acceptable performance for a given scenario in your environment is driven by your
business requirements.
Oracle Desktop Client Recommendations Required Recommended
11i MetaLink Note 232833.1 Processor 233MHz 1.4GHz + or higher

RAM 256MB Or higher1
R12 MetaLink Note 405293.1 Processor 350MHz 1.4GHz + or higher
RAM 256MB Or higher1

Table 1: Oracle Client Requirements and Recommendations
1 You will experience better performance with additional memory
The Oracle client recommendations state that when evaluating CPU speed and
amount of memory, consider Microsoft's minimum requirements for the operating
system, other software that runs concurrently, and external factors such as network
characteristics. You should check that the desktop configuration is sufficient to
achieve the throughput necessary to sustain your business model; your requirements
may be higher than the minimum specification. Even if you have what would
normally be considered a high-specification machine, you may encounter
A minimum specification client only
performance problems when running several applications simultaneously.
provides a minimal performance that may It is important to note that minimum specifications are exactly that, and will only
not be sufficient to support your business.
provide minimum performance. A minimum specification client may be adequate
for casual home use, but would probably not be considered sufficient when running
several applications together as would typically be the case in a business setting. For
example, displaying thousands of tasks and shifts that span several weeks on a Gantt
chart in Advanced Supply Chain Planning will cause severe paging on minimum
specification machines, and the PC client will appear unresponsive for a considerable
time.

THE TESTING METHODOLOGY
You will need to create a list of candidate transactions, benchmark a range of
configurations to determine performance within your specific environment, and then
consider which factors you need to include in your testing. This section provides
guidelines on selecting a set of transactions to test, and provides a provisional set of
guidelines based on the experience gained during the testing that was conducted for
this paper.
Creating a List of Test Candidate Transactions

One of the primary components of a benchmark is a set of key transactions that are
Create a list of critical business
usually best defined by the business and user managers. Users typically cite form or
transactions that you
need to benchmark. screen opening times and inter-field navigation as performance concerns. As data
and inter-field operations generally have a high dependency on the data volumes,
system setup, profile options, and other variables, these factors have been excluded
as the test environment is based on a single machine using a default Oracle E-
Business Suite install and the Vision database.
If you wish to expand the tests in this paper, it is important not to confuse issues
directly relating to client performance with other factors such as navigating between
fields on a form or querying data. These are more likely to be influenced by the
relative performance of the database, application tiers, and associated servers.
The tests in this paper focus on the time to The tests in this paper focus on the time to open a form or screen as the primary
open a form or screen as the primary indicator of client performance. While some tests include querying data, this is
indicator of client performance.
generally restricted to situations where this is required to enable other forms to
open. Their definitions are listed in Appendix A. Some screens and forms can be
accessed through multiple responsibilities or users, but each path may produce
different results. For this reason, the user details and menu navigation path are
included to ensure that any comparisons are valid and to assist with comparative
testing in the event that you are unfamiliar with the full range of products.
Your initial list of forms and screens is collated by surveying your departments or
business management units. The composite list may be very large and you may need
to create a subset of representative test candidates. If your background is technical,
you may consider mapping the forms and their respective transactions against high-
volume or high-transaction tables. However, this will need further review from a
functional perspective and understanding of the business flow that includes which
forms can be kept open simultaneously, and (and more importantly) the frequency
of switching between forms, screens, and responsibilities.
You may also benefit by using an approach where a business process can be broken
into a set of discrete functions that need to be completed within a set time. For
example, a customer service agent who takes an order over a phone will typically
need to perform the following tasks:
• Enter or locate customer and address information
• Enter an order for the goods and check their availability
• Enter payment details
• Create a picking list for the warehouse
• Print an invoice and shipping label

While this may be a simplification of your business flow, it is easy to identify the first
three processes as critical business functions, i.e. those that need to be completed in
a timely manner. If the order entry clerk needs to switch between screens, the system
will need to react quickly enough so that the customer does not become frustrated
with the delay and possibly even terminate their order. The final two tasks may be
classified as non-critical as they can be deferred or run as concurrent processes; in
any event, they are not relevant in this context, as the process code does not interact
with the PC client.
Once you have a list of forms and screens, you need to decide and agree
Ensure that your simulation models have
performance targets for each component that is essential to sustain the critical
all salient characteristics including the
network and other applications that will be business functions, as this will decide the amount of client tuning and minimum
running simultaneously. hardware requirements. The following set of guidelines provides the basis for a test
specification:
• Specify which forms and screens need to be open at the same time.
• Specify other applications that will be used at the same time including for
example, firewalls, antivirus, chat, email, spreadsheets, word processors,
diary systems, and other internal systems and applications. Importantly,
specify if these are usually minimized when not in use.
• Specify the network characteristics that need to be modeled including
latency, bandwidth limitations, acceleration, and saturation levels. Other less
tangible characteristics such as packet loss, or fragmentation (assembly and
disassembly), can be a major overhead in certain geographies, or on
particular types of network.
Specify any factors that the desktop policy allows that would degrade client
performance. For example, allowing a high-resolution photo as a wallpaper and/or
Windows animation effects may degrade the form display time by as much as 30%
on low specification clients. The exact list of items that needs to be considered or
included increases as the machine specification decreases. A set of high impact
changes for low-memory clients is included in Appendix B: Tuning the Client.
The Test Environment and Testing Issues

The following web browsers are certified by Oracle for use with Windows XP clients
in Oracle E-Business Suite 11i and 12 environments:
• Internet Explorer 6
• Internet Explorer 7
• Firefox 2
The initial amount of memory used by a Each browser is an application in its own right, and each has different characteristics
browser is referred to as an offset
with a different memory footprint and behavior. The amount of memory used by a
and needs to be considered when
browser when it is started with a blank “Home Page” is known as the browser’s
analyzing the results.
memory footprint and referred to as the browser offset. This needs to be investigated
and taken into consideration when analyzing results and making recommendations.

All the tests in this paper were run against an Oracle E-Business instance with the
You should expect to achieve better
Vision Demo Database. The machine was a single 2.13GHz Intel Core Duo server
response times on your system.
with 4GB RAM running Red Hat Linux 4 using the ext3 file system on a logical
volume group that spanned two disks. As this machine is exceptionally small when
compared to a typical production system, all the tests were run once prior to
recording results to ensure that the performance of this machine did not adversely
affect the tests. This is similar to most production systems that utilize a number of
caches that maintain the code and data that is common use. While this does not
affect client memory, you should expect to achieve better response times on your
system.
To save time, use a subset of tests to The benchmarks compare Oracle JInitiator 1.3.1.29 and the Sun Java2 Standard
establish a scaling factor that can be
Edition Java Runtime Engine (JRE) 1.5.0_12, which were the latest certified versions
applied to the results in this paper.
at the time of writing. No patches were applied to the Oracle E-Business Suite 11i or
12 environments, even though there are several patches or family packs that you
would normally apply to any environment for functionality or performance. This
approach means that you can quickly replicate this environment. It may be pertinent
to compare a subset of tests in your environment to establish if there is a significant
difference or factor that can be applied to scale the results in this paper.
When a form or screen starts, it will frequently access system, product, user, and
You need to encompass all salient client
other information. This initial communication between the client and server is
and network conditions in your test
environment. affected by latency, available bandwidth, and possibly other constraints related to the
network infrastructure (such as packet prioritization). Therefore, if you are planning
to deploy clients in remote high-latency locations, you will need to simulate the
salient conditions in your test environment. This is especially important as a form
accessed over a LAN may only take a few seconds to open, whereas it may take a
minute or even longer when deployed over a high latency network link. If it
transpires that latency is the primary performance bottleneck, then you should
consider traffic compression technologies and caching. Network optimization will
have a positive effect on overall client performance.
The following key points were identified during testing:
• The nature of Windows memory management means that you need to restart
the browser in-between each of the tests when determining the memory profile
of individual forms and screens. This does not affect combinations of screens
used in a standard business flow.
• If you repeatedly open and close a browser you may notice that the memory
measurements change, especially on very low-specification clients. This may be
the result of paging, and should stabilize after a short time. It is imperative to
ensure that the initial browser memory allocation does not change between
tests, as this would skew the results.
• You need to ensure the working environment is representative of the user
experience. In this paper, all the applications were opened in advance of the
tests. Equally important is that they are in the same state each time. In the tests
the windows overlaid each other; minimizing any of them at any time would
have radically skewed the results. You will need to bear this in mind when
following a set of actions that represent a standard business flow.

• Unless shown to be contributing to a memory problem, avoid minimizing and
restoring the measurement tools as this significantly changes the memory profile
on low-specification machines.
• Do not leave a test part way through and then return to it later, as the Windows
memory manager may well have reorganized the Windows environment and this
may create a substantially different environment.
• Unlike working on the Internet, if you make a mistake when selecting a form
and quickly click on another option, you will find that you have an apparently
anomalous large memory footprint. This is accounted for by both forms being
opened, but only one being visible, as they overlay each other when they are
rendered.
• With Internet Explorer 7 and Firefox 2 specifically, some of the memory
measurements take some time to settle after a screen or form has opened.
• Several of the clients had a relatively large amount of memory (1-2GB) that
should have been more than adequate to test without process trimming or other
Windows memory management issues. It was surprising how few applications it
took before Windows started to trim the Working Sets, so you should consider
this, especially when testing a suite of applications. Refer to the Process Trimming
section for further information.
Additional guidelines are provided in the More Testing Tips section.
Testing Accuracy
If your simulation and testing methodology is consistent, repeated tests on the same
Even though measuring Windows memory
PC client should be within a tolerance of 2.5%. If the accuracy is lower, then you
is an inexact science, you should achieve
an accuracy of 2.5% should establish the cause, as it could be contributing to problems with the end-user
experience.
PC Clients Used in these Tests

The PC clients used in the test are listed in Table 2. All of the machines were
running Intel processors with Windows XP SP2 and all the latest patches.
With the exception of the Intel 930 Core Duo PC, all the machines were laptops.
The 366MHz/128MB client is below the Oracle recommendation, but the
architecture meant that it was neither possible nor practical to change the amount of
installed memory. This was included as it provides insights to the performance of
specialized clients that are difficult or expensive to upgrade. In theory, as the tests
were conducted with the minimum of other applications running, 256MB should be
adequate for all except the most demanding of tests.
Virtual machines (VM) were considered as an easy way of changing the system
memory, as they appeared to function without a problem. However, the memory
profile (specifically Working Set and Private Bytes) within the VM environment did
not always follow the same profile as a native Windows environment. At this stage,
more research is needed to reconcile disparities in the memory measurements
between real and virtual clients, and consequently further testing was not carried out.

Speed Memory Comment
366MHz 128MB This is the minimum specification client for Oracle E-

Pentium II Business Suite 12. The memory is just above the Microsoft
minimum but below Oracle recommendations.
700MHz 256MB Although old technology, this is the minimum memory
Pentium III recommended for Oracle E-Business Suite 11i and 12.
1.6GHz 1GB This speed appears to be very common, but many users
Pentium expect to run several large applications simultaneously but
with only 256MB or 512MB RAM.
T2400 Mobile 2GB This is alleged to be equivalent to 3.43GHz (according to
Core Duo non-Intel resources). At the time of writing, this is the
1.8GHz standard Oracle laptop (with either 1GB or 2GB of RAM).
Intel 930 Core 2GB This is one of the fastest clients available at reasonable cost
Duo 3GHz without commanding a substantial price-premium.
Intel 930 Core 256MB Again, one of the fastest clients, but this will highlight
Duo 3GHz differences between the 256MB and 2GB memory sizes.
Table 2: PC Clients Used for the Tests
WINDOWS MEMORY DEFINITIONS AND MEASUREMENT TOOLS

One of the challenges of Windows internals is that definitions found on the Internet
An understanding of the terminology is
are often incomplete, taken out of context, or simply erroneous. For this reason, the
essential for successful interpretation of
the test results. specific meaning of each of these terms needs to be defined and explained. This
section introduces the types of memory and how each is managed; further detail and
more comprehensive definitions are included in Appendix C: Windows Memory
Internals.
Different Types of Memory

Like most operating systems, Windows uses a virtual memory model, and each 32-
bit Windows process can have private and shared memory, which are defined as
follows:
• Private memory – This is the exclusive private virtual memory allocated
to the process and inaccessible by any other process. It is also referred to
as Private Virtual Bytes.
• Shared Memory – Shared memory contains an image or a mapped file
such as a dynamic link library (DLL) that can be simultaneously accessed
by multiple programs. Once referenced, the object is mapped into each
process’s address space even though the data or image file is only loaded
once into system memory.
Private memory and shared memory are collectively referred to as the process’s
Working Set (WS), which is defined as the combination of physical private and shared
memory pages that have been used or recently “touched” by the threads of a
process. They can be referenced without incurring a page fault.

The amount of shared memory depends on the combination of applications that you
The amount of shareable and shared
use concurrently, and (to some extent) the functions that you are using within the
memory depends on the other applications
in use at the same time. Oracle E-Business Suite. Figure 1 compares the average amount of shareable and
shared memory for each of the browsers across a range of tests (on the 1.83GHz
T2400 Core Duo with 2GB RAM). You would not expect many memory pages to
be shared in the test environment, as the client only had standard background
applications such as a virus checker, and a minimal business set of applications open
including Mozilla Thunderbird (email), Pidgin (chat client), Process Explorer and
Microsoft Excel.
Figure 1: Comparing Shareable and Shared Memory
The amount of shareable memory will vary over time, but is not really a concern, as
it does not limit the actual amount of shared memory pages. As Internet Explorer is
a Microsoft product, you would expect it to share more memory pages with the
Windows Kernel and other Microsoft applications, and this is indeed evident in the
results. The amount of shared memory used by Internet Explorer increases when
also using other Windows applications such as Microsoft Outlook. Firefox is an
open source browser, so not surprisingly shares a relatively small amount of memory
with Windows components. Even so, the 3.5MB difference between Firefox and
IE7 is only 35% and in practical terms, this is a small percentage. Several other
factors need to be considered prior to choosing a particular browser.
Choosing a Tool to Measure Memory
Undertaking meaningful measurements of the various types of Windows memory

can be complicated, so this section starts by providing an overview of the available
tools and then maps them to the different type of memory in a tabular format.
This section focuses on the following three tools:

• Task Manager (taskmgr) – Start by entering taskmgr at a command
prompt, from the taskbar context menu, pressing [CTRL] [SHIFT]
[ESC], or [CTRL] [ALT] [DEL] then selecting Task Manager. The
column names can be misleading. In the default view, it shows the
mem usage column, which is a measure of only the physical amount of
memory used by a process (Working Set). You also need to display
VM Size, which is the process’s virtual private memory usage (and not
the virtual memory size). Measurements do not necessarily reflect a
reduction in the Java heap belonging to the Oracle client even though
you can see a reduction in the Java console and a corresponding
reduction in the commit charge (shown in Task Manager). Working
Set can be overstated, as Windows does not necessarily trim the
physical memory allocated to a process until it has a need to, or there
is a period of inactivity. If Windows trims the Working Set, you
cannot use this as a reliable measure of the true amount of memory
(Private Virtual Bytes) that the program is using.
• Performance Monitor (perfmon) – Start from the command
prompt, or navigate to Settings | Control Panel | Administrative
Tools | Performance. This very comprehensive tool requires pre-
configuring with an appropriate set of counters. It can be
cumbersome and scaling graphs can be difficult. In general, it is better
suited to tracking changes over time.
• Process Explorer (procexp) – Start from the command prompt, or
the installed location. This is a free program available from Microsoft
and is the tool that was used for all the measurements in this paper. It
is quick and easy to configure, and there are support forums should
you encounter issues. Documentation is minimal, but this tool was
the easiest to configure, and provided the complete range of metrics
throughout this paper.
Process Explorer is shown in Figure 2. The top pane shows detailed information
The Process Explorer, a free tool from
about currently active processes. The lower window can be configured to show
Microsoft, provides the Working Set and
Private Bytes used for the measurements either the process handles that a process has opened, or (as in this example) the
throughout this paper. DLLs and memory-mapped files that the process has loaded.
The following steps were used to configure the tool to provide the measurements in
this paper:
• In Options | Configure Highlighting: Uncheck Own Processes.
• Right-click either column set and select the corresponding
columns in the Process Memory tab (top pane) and DLL tab
(lower pane) sections.

Figure 2: Process Explorer
Process Explorer provides the Working Set (WS) and Private Bytes (PB) used for the
measurements throughout this paper. The Peak Working Set specifies the maximum
amount of physical memory that a process has been allocated since it started. During
testing, the peaks only lasted a short time even on the slowest client, and there was
no correlation with any major performance related Window events. The peaks were
always within close proximity of the Working Set and can generally be ignored. WS
Private shows the amount of memory exclusive to the process. The WS Shareable
and WS shared columns break down the process’s non-private pages into what can
potentially be shared, and what is actually being shared by at least one other process.
Working Set is usually larger than Private As a point of interest, on a PC with plenty of memory, Working Set is usually larger
Bytes on a machine with plenty of memory. than Private Bytes. If Private Bytes significantly exceed Working Set for the majority
If Private Bytes exceed Working Set for the of applications that have never been minimized, you will benefit from running fewer
majority of applications that have never applications simultaneously or additional memory. This introduces further important
been minimized, you will benefit from concepts that are discussed at length in the Process Trimming section.
running fewer applications simultaneously
or additional memory. Notice that Figure 2 shows a very small Working Set for the Palm Desktop; this
indicates that the application was minimized and the process has been trimmed.
While the process only had 5MB of physical memory allocated, it was still using
20MB of private virtual memory (Private Bytes).
Double-click a process (or right-click and select Properties from the context menu)
to show additional process information. The Performance Chart in Figure 3 provides
a graph of the Private Bytes history, and although not the focus of this paper, the
CPU and I/O. The Performance tab in Figure 4 shows detailed information about
the process. This information provides significantly more detail. For example, it is
possible to calculate the precise amount of physical RAM that is currently backed up
in the paging file. This may be interesting if you were trying to size a paging file
accurately, instead of simply using the standard approach of using minimum =
maximum = 2 x physical memory. The columns displayed on the main screen
provide adequate analytical information for the purposes of this paper.

Figure 3: Process Explorer Performance Graph Figure 4: Process Explorer Performance Tab
Choosing Which Memory to Measure
As you will appreciate, there are several different ways to measure memory. Peak
There are four ways to measure memory.
Working Set, Working Set, Private Bytes, WS Private and WS Shared are compared
graphically in Figure 5. To be pedantic, the measurements include the initial amount
of memory used by the browser, which is a pivotal topic discussed in The Browser
Offset Memory section. As such, the chart should only be used to compare the
different approaches to memory measurement. In order to make the comparison
easier, the terminology is summarized in Table 3.
Figure 5: Comparing Memory Measurements

The least noteworthy is the sum of the amount of physical memory exclusive to the
If you decide to use Working Set,
process (WS Private) and the amount shared with at least one other process (WS
you also have to measure
Private Bytes as a control. Shared). Although this is an absolute measure of the physical memory utilization, it
is understated: instead of using WS Shared, it should use WS Shareable (as used by
Working Set) to map all the pages used by the process.
Working Set represents the pages in physical memory that are dedicated to a
particular process. From a theoretical point of view, Working Set (effectively the
sum of WS Private + WS Shareable) would seem to be the most accurate way to
measure the size of a single process. With multiple applications, counting the entire
Working Set for each process will over-count memory, as the shared component is
included in each. Due to the way that Windows manages memory, you also need to
measure Private Bytes to ensure that the Working Set has not been trimmed (which
can happen as soon as an application is started).
You could argue that you only need to be concerned with the Peak Working Set as
this is the most likely to cause problems. However, as mentioned in the previous
section, these were very short duration and did not have a significant affect, even on
the smallest of machines. Therefore, this does not represent the actual amount of
memory being used. Furthermore, like Working Set, Peak Working Set may also be
subject to process trimming on low-memory clients.
Private Bytes represents the private virtual memory that the program has been
Private Bytes is more accurate than
allocated and is used exclusively by the process; it can reside in physical memory or
Working Set on a low-memory client.
the page file. It is smaller than Working Set as it does not include the shared memory
component, but could be considered more accurate if the shared memory
components were already shared by the other active applications.
At this stage, the difference between Working Set and Private Bytes looks very small,
This paper focuses on both Private Bytes and you might argue that you could use either of these approaches. Each has its
and Working Set.
problems and both have potential inaccuracies. It appears that you could quote a
maximum safe value (Working Set) or more accurate (Private Bytes), and for slightly
better accuracy add the amount of shared memory. In order to understand more
about the relationship between these two figures you need to understand what
happens when the Windows memory manager trims a process.

Process Task Performance Description Comments
Explorer Manager Monitor
Virtual Size N/A Virtual Bytes A process’s virtual address space consists This is far higher than the
of free, reserved, and committed memory physical requirements. It does
pages. Reserving address space costs not represent the real amount
nothing in terms of memory consumption of memory that the program is
but allows for future allocations from a using.
contiguous area of memory.
Private VM Size Process | This is the private virtual memory that the This may undercount memory
Bytes Private Bytes process has been allocated. It is committed as it omits the shared memory
memory that can reside in physical memory that the process is using.
or page file and is protected and However, it is accurate when
inaccessible by any other process. The shared memory is minimal. It is
difference between Private Bytes and WS the best value to use once a
Private is the total that is currently not in process has been minimized, or
memory but is backed by the page file. on a machine with low memory
where the process may be
immediately trimmed.
Working Set Mem Process | These pages are currently resident in This value can be larger than
Usage Working Set physical memory and dedicated to a the minimum number of bytes
specific process. It is effectively the sum of actually needed by the process,
Process Explorer WS Private + WS as it includes the shared
Shareable. The peak Working Set is the memory for each application. It
maximum amount of physical memory may artificially reduce as you
used since the process was started. open more programs (due to
trimming). The accuracy
decreases when several
processes involved in the total.
WS Private N/A N/A This is the amount of physical mapped This cannot be used in
memory used by, and only accessible by, isolation, as it does not include
that process. Other processes cannot share the shared memory component.
it. This is the same as Private Bytes except
all referenced pages are currently resident
in physical memory as opposed to both
physical memory and page file.
WS N/A N/A WS Shareable is the amount of memory in Use this to determine the
Shareable a process’s Working Set that can be shared amount of shared memory that
and WS with other processes. WS Shared is the is in use/may be used by the
Shared subset of the shareable memory that is process Working Set.
shared with at least one other process.
Table 3: Mapping Task Manager, Performance Monitor, and Process Explorer

Process Trimming
Understanding process trimming is essential as it explains why the ratio of Private
Working Set may be trimmed with a only
Bytes to Working Set radically changes. A process’s Working Set may be trimmed
single Oracle E-Business Suite form or
screen on a client with only 1GB RAM. with only a single Oracle E-Business Suite form open on a PC client with only 1GB
RAM; if this happens, it will skew your results, hence the need to monitor Private
Bytes.
If the Working Set of an existing process increases, or you start another application
and there is enough physical memory available, it is simply assigned from the
available pool of free memory without affecting other processes. However, if
insufficient free memory is available, Windows will need to trim (displace) memory
pages from other processes. Unlike unmodified memory pages that can be reused
immediately, modified pages must to be written to the page file before they can be
reused. Paging large numbers of modified memory pages due to insufficient physical
memory or too many applications running simultaneously will result in disk thrashing.
Once a process has been trimmed and the Working Set dramatically reduced, it can
Users should never minimize an Oracle
take several seconds for an application to recover and become responsive again. It
E-Business Suite form or screen.
would be natural (but incorrect) to think that Oracle E-Business Suite was the cause
If you accidentally minimize a form in a of the slowdown, when in fact Windows was responsible. To ensure optimal
test, you will have to restart the test.
performance at all times, users should never minimize an Oracle E-Business Suite
component.
The Performance Monitor chart in Figure 6 shows the relationship between
Working Set and Private Bytes for the Oracle E-Business Suite 12 Purchase Order
form using Internet Explorer 7 on a client with 2GB memory (effectively
unrestricted and not subject to immediate trimming). The chart shows the process
from starting the browser, logging in, selecting the purchasing menu, and opening
the form. Up to this point, Working Set exceeds Private Bytes as expected.
Minimizing the form results in a substantial reduction of the Working Set, but
Minimizing an application radically
(importantly) Private Bytes remains static. When free memory falls below a
reduces the Working Set, but Private Bytes
remains the same. threshold, pages are trimmed from the Working Set. While the exact memory figures
are not relevant, minimizing all browser windows reduces the Working Set to 14%
of the original.
Restoring the browser window containing the form and running an open query
proves that the application is functioning, but at this point, it is only using 40% of
the original allocation. Moving and maximizing all the browser windows increases
the Working Set, but this only reached 70% of the original, even when subsequent
queries were run. However, minimizing and then later maximizing a form that
contains a multi-record block causes a loss of mouse focus within that block. It is
therefore advisable not to use the minimize form option until the resolution of
Oracle bug 6041461.

Form is Minimize the
Displayed Private Bytes
Form
Strart Purchase Order

Remains the Same
Purchasing Menu
Login Screen
Run further
Start Browser
Maximize all
Queries
Minimize all
Explorer Windows
Windows
Maximize the
Form Window
Run an Open Query
Restore the Form
Figure 6: Process Trimming -Working Set and Private Bytes Compared
Rules of Thumb – Private Bytes and Working Set

As previously mentioned, Windows trimming can be very aggressive. Sometimes you
may find it difficult to understand why trimming is taking place when you appear to
have ample free memory. The process is discussed in detail in the Process Trimming
and the Memory Stacks section of Appendix C.
Once trimmed, a process’s Working Set is understated as it only counts physical
Once trimmed, a process’s Working Set is
memory and does not include memory paged to disk; therefore, you also have to
understated, as it does not include
memory paged to disk. monitor Private Bytes. This leads to the following rules:
• On a client with plenty of available memory, use Private Bytes to check that
On a client where the Working Set has
Working Set has not been trimmed, as it is not affected by the Windows
been trimmed (perhaps as soon as the
application is started), you have to use memory management process.
Private Bytes, and for better accuracy, add
• On a client with little available memory, Windows will trim the Working Set
the amount of shared memory.
physical memory for use by other applications, perhaps as soon as it is
started. In this case, you have to use Private Bytes instead, and for better
accuracy, add the amount of shared memory.

UNDERSTANDING THE BROWSER MEMORY OFFSET AND SCALING
RESULTS
During the tests, the browser was set to display a blank “Home Page” by default.
Failing to normalize the browser offset
The browser offset (initial amount of memory) varied between 9MB and 36MB,
would skew and invalidate comparisons
across browsers. depending on the browser/client combination. The variation of more than 25MB
between the highest and lowest Working Sets needs to be normalized; failing to
consider this would skew and invalidate comparisons across browsers.
Figure 7 shows the measurements for private bytes and working set for each of the
three browsers across the five test machines, using JRE with Oracle E-Business Suite
12. The chart is color-coded. Each browser is assigned a different color using two
shades: blue for IE6, yellow for IE7, and orange for FF2.
Figure 7: Browser Memory As Measured For Oracle E-Business Suite 12 Using JRE
There is a lot of detail in this chart. Notice that the browser footprint on the first
Firefox has the highest memory footprint
two low-specification machines is very small; this may be due to a more radical
on the 1.83GHz Core Duo,
but this includes several plug-ins approach to memory management, effectively resulting in immediate process
and helper applications. trimming. When IE7 is installed over IE6, it integrates all the same browser
extensions used by its predecessor, and the larger footprint relates to an increase in
functionality.
A first glance at these results shows that Firefox has the highest memory footprint
(on the 1.83GHz Core Duo), but this is misleading as this particular browser
includes several plug-ins and helper applications that you may not find in a normal
business environment. A more accurate comparison for the basic Firefox browser is
the 23.6MB on the Intel 930 Core Duo, which was a fresh install and this is
noticeably less than Internet Explorer 7 (30.4MB).

The initial intent was to reduce the browser memory profile to a minimum and
Understanding the browser offset
ensure consistency by using an identical Windows build. The high impact changes
identified additional optimization
opportunities for low-memory clients that listed in Appendix B were necessary for the smallest clients and for consistency were
would have been missed. applied to all environments. Although the changes improved performance, none
significantly influenced the browser’s footprint. While this is clearly unrelated to
Oracle E-Business Suite, establishing the reasons for the difference in browser
behavior was the first mystery that needed to be solved in these tests.
How to Map Integrated Browser Components

The Process Explorer shown in Figure 2 lists the DLLs referenced by the browser.
Identify the highest memory utilization
Sorting by WS Total will show the highest memory components first. Not only is it
components using Process Explorer and
then map obscure DLLs from within the sometimes difficult to correlate DLLs to a specific browser component, it can be
browser. difficult to differentiate between core browser components and those associated
with additional features. Some can be intuitively mapped to a plug-in or helper
application, while others can be mapped from within the browser.
In Firefox enter about:plugins in the URL; in Internet Explorer 6, this information is
available in the Tools menu; in Internet Explorer 7 use the Manage Add-ons screen.
An example of the Manage Add-ons screen is shown in Figure 8. The display
categories include Add-ons that have been used, those currently loaded, those run
without requiring permission and those that load when Internet Explorer Starts
(This final option was available at the start of the tests, but appears to have been
removed, possibly by a Windows update).
Figure 8: Internet Explorer 7 Manage Add-ons Screen
Adobe Acrobat Reader, Skype, and the Google Toolbar
Adobe Acrobat Reader, Skype, and the Google Toolbar were installed in each of the
browsers and their memory profiles compared in Figure 9. The Internet Explorer 7
memory utilization increased much more than the other browsers even though the
version and size of the utilities was identical.

Figure 9: Comparing Browser Add-On Memory Profiles
Table 4 shows an abbreviated export from Process Explorer for Internet Explorer 7
The largest components are the
with Adobe Reader, Skype, and the Google Toolbar. Note that some utilities will not
Google Toolbar and the
Microsoft Phishing Filter Data File. appear in the DLL listing until they have been used at least once.
Process PID Working Set Private Bytes
iexplore.exe 4680 39,900KB 28,612KB
Name Description WS Total WS Private
IEFRAME.dll Internet Explorer 3008KB 2328KB

googletoolbar Google IE Client 2560KB 2328KB
ieapfltr.dat MS Phishing Filter Data File 2392KB 0KB
mshtml.dll MS HTML Viewer 2260KB 40KB
SPhoneParser Skype 1756KB 576KB
SKypelEPlugin Skype 1168KB 740KB
shell32.cll Windows Shell Common 476KB 36KB
Total 24,588KB
Table 4: A Sorted Extract from Process Explorer

In this particular example, the WS Total for the mapped components account for
approximately 24MB out of the total 39MB Working Set, which is considerably less
than the Working Set Size. A part of the reason is that, for example, Adobe Reader
(AcroIEHelper.dll) does not appear in the list unless you have a PDF file open in the
browser.

Microsoft Phishing Option
Mapping add-ons and plug-ins can be Table 4 identifies the Microsoft Phishing option as one of the largest components.
difficult and instead it may be easier to This can be disabled and the results for the Internet Explorer 7 memory footprint
measure the browser memory footprint are shown in Table 5.
before and after you integrate the features.
Option Working Set Private Bytes
On 39,900KB 28,612KB
Disabled 36,416KB 24,736KB
Difference 3,484KB 3,876KB
Table 5: Exploring the Microsoft Phishing Option
Given that the Phishing data file (ieapfltr.dat) has a WS Total of 2,392KB, disabling
this option shows a Working Set reduction of 3,484KB, which indicates that some
other associated components were not loaded. While disabling this function on an
Intranet may be useful, this highlights a possible requirement to review proposed
changes with a wider audience (such as network security in this case).
Disabling every add-on resulted in an unexpectedly small reduction of the browser’s
Disabling all add-ons did not reduce the
Working Set by approximately 7MB. For IT professionals wanting to take the
browser memory as much as expected and
attempting to normalize the browser
analysis to the next stage, the browser startup events can be captured using Process
footprints was abandoned. Monitor (also free from Microsoft). These can be filtered using the browser Process
IDentifier (PID), which is shown in Process Explorer. There are in excess of 30,000
events for Internet Explorer 7, but again, correlation to the DLLs, drivers, and data
files is not easy. Trying to normalize the browser footprints was abandoned after
extensive analysis.
Factors That Affect the Browser Memory Footprint

Normally the Internet can supply a plethora of information, but there is very little
Avoid integrating browser components
discussion on the amount of memory used by browser components. The following
that are not essential to the business.
list of components was compiled throughout the investigation; some aspects could
be construed as obvious while others are more obscure:
• Figures 7 and 9 show that Internet Explorer 6 has the smallest browser
footprint, and as will be shown, the smallest average Working Set across the
Oracle E-Business Suite tests in this paper.
• The browser footprint may be automatically trimmed if there is little
available memory. This can be affected not only by applications that are
automatically started with Windows, but also by background services.
• A significant amount of memory can be used by browser themes, extensions,
plug-ins and helper applications such as Adobe Acrobat, Adobe Shockwave,
Adobe Flash Player, Apple QuickTime, RealNetworks RealPlayer, Skype,
and password managers.
• Toolbars can use several megabytes of memory.
• Codecs (to support multimedia content) are generally not required.

• Phishing controls are probably not required on secure Intranets with
restricted or no Internet access
• The download history uses memory and should be regularly cleared. This
seemingly insignificant issue has been reported as an issue with Firefox.
• Windows components including the number of language packs and multi-
lingual support, all use memory. Avoid the installation of unnecessary
language packs, even if you use a corporate image.
• Avoiding other integrated components is more difficult, such as MIDI and
audio support, the Remote Access connection manager and associated APIs
and the Windows Telephony client. The combination depends on the type
of client and device drivers, but older machines tend to have more drivers
that are less integrated with Windows (and less shareable/shared memory).
Overall, when designing a system for low-memory clients, the goal is judicious
removal of high-memory non-essential components that needlessly add to the
browser memory footprint.
Deciding How To Scale Results

Deciding which method to use to scale
results is critical.
As different browsers have different offsets on each client, it is important to find an
approach that can be used to scale the results so that they can be compared.
Deciding which method to use to scale results was found to be as involved as trying
to normalize the browser footprints.
Baseline the Browser Memory Offset
Referring to the discussion around Figure 7, the most reliable measurements for the
Table 6 shows the offsets that have been
browser footprints are the fresh installs on the Intel 930 Core Duo PC. Rounding
used as a basis to scale all the results.
these figures keeps the calculations simple without introducing significant errors.
Table 6 shows the resulting offsets that have been used as a basis to scale all the
results.
Browser IE6 IE7 FF2
Working Set 20MB 30MB 25MB

Table 6: Standard Memory Offsets
Decide Which Scaled Approach to Use
The approaches considered to scale the results are as follows:

• Difference the Results Using an Average Browser Footprint – Adjust
each result by adding or subtracting the difference between the actual
browser offset and the datum provided in Table 6. This approach worked
remarkably well until it was noticed that the ratio of Private Bytes to
Working Set was being skewed for particular tests.
• Exclude the Browser Offset – Deducting the initial browser footprint
means that you could simply add your browser offset to scale the results for
your environment. However, the results are skewed by the differences
shown in Table 6, thereby reducing differences between the browsers.

• Scale Results based on the Static Ratio of Browser Offsets – This
approach resulted in a dramatic increase in Private Bytes for both IE7 and
FF2 as the ratio of Private Bytes and Working Set is not static and varies by
the type of Oracle E-Business Suite component.
• Scaled Results Using a Variable Ratio – This proved to be the most
The variable scaling ratio is the
accurate method, but you have to use variable scaling as follows:
most accurate.
o Use a scaling factor based on the browser offset from Table 6 to

calculate the new Working Set
o Establish the percentage difference for the original Working Set
and Private Bytes
o Use the percentage to calculate the new Private Bytes value from
the new Working Set
CAUTION! You cannot use this approach on a client running Windows XP

SP2 with less than 2GB memory otherwise you will find that the Windows
memory manager may skew the results due to aggressive trimming. In this
case, you will have to use Private Bytes as the key, but this may be less
accurate (depending on the shared memory).
Figure 10 shows a graphic comparison and visual check of all the average memory
used by each method for the full range of tests using Oracle E-Business Suite 12
with JRE. Firefox included several additional components and including it shows
how well each method worked.
Figure 10: Verifying the Choice of Scaling Method
This chart shows that excluding the offset reduces the differences between the
browsers, but this is misleading as this incorrectly indicates that Firefox has the
highest footprint. Scaling using a static ratio dramatically changes the ratio of Private
Bytes and Working Set for IE7 and Firefox. The scaled results using a variable ratio
follow the same pattern as the extrapolated averages in Table 6; the Firefox browser
with the additional components has been fully normalized and the ratio of Private
Bytes and Working Set for all three browsers is verifiable.

Figure 10 implies that Internet Explorer 6 remains the browser with the smallest
initial memory footprint. You might infer that the other browsers are less suitable
for low-memory clients and although the difference of a few megabytes is very small,
further research shows that this decision is not so clear, as the profile changes
depending on the type of application used. This highlights a common problem with
mixed benchmarks, and demonstrates that while using a more granular approach is
sometimes beneficial, it does not eliminate the need to perform your own tests with
your own particular combination of applications.
ORACLE E-BUSINESS SUITE 12 – THE RESULTS

The first half of this paper includes a full testing methodology that can be deployed
in your environment and describes how to accurately scale the results when working
with different browsers across a range of clients.
The key points that need to be understood for successful interpretation of the results
includes the types of memory that need to be measured (Working Set and Private
Bytes), the ratio between them, why they cannot be used in isolation, and what
happens when an application is minimized or the process is trimmed by the
Windows memory manager.
As a recap, some of the key points are as follows:
• Working Set and Private Bytes are both important and should not be used
in isolation.
o Working Set is a measure of the combination of physical private
and shared memory pages that are currently resident in physical
memory and dedicated to a specific process. When measuring
multiple applications, it can be overstated as it includes the shared
memory component.
o Private Bytes is a measure of the virtual private memory allocated
to the process. It can reside in physical memory or the page file,
but does not include shared memory and so may undercount the
amount of memory being used.
• Minimizing or trimming a process results in a substantial reduction of the
On a client where the Working Set has
Working Set, but importantly Private Bytes remains static. Once trimmed, a
been trimmed (perhaps as soon as the
application is started), you have to use process’s Working Set is understated as it only counts physical memory and
Private Bytes, and for better accuracy, add does not include memory paged to disk.
the amount of shared memory.
The following rules were established:

• On a client with plenty of available memory, use Private Bytes to check that
Working Set has not been trimmed, as it is not affected by the Windows
memory management process.
• On a client with little available memory, Windows will trim the Working Set
physical memory for use by other applications, perhaps as soon as it is
started. In this case, you have to use Private Bytes instead, and for better
accuracy, add the amount of shared memory

Unlike Oracle E-Business Suite 11i, Release 12 does not use Oracle JInitiator for its
Forms-based content. Instead, Oracle Forms runs directly with the native Sun Java2
Standard Edition Java Runtime Engine 1.5.0_12. For further information, refer to
Steven Chan’s blog http://blogs.oracle.com/schan/release12.
All the measurements in this paper assume that you have used the standard menus as
installed and not used shortcuts that would inevitably change the memory utilization
profile. Recall also that the browser was restarted for technical reasons between each
test instead of using the change responsibility function.
Although this paper focuses on low-memory clients, you will find that as Windows
takes a very aggressive approach to trimming process memory, using a client with
less than 2GB of memory will skew your results. For this reason, the amount of
client memory is important and needs to be considered in each set of results. Note
that the amount of memory used by Process Explorer and Excel is relatively small,
and therefore should not affect the tests.
Comparing Browsers and Oracle E-Business Suite Components

Figure 11 shows the Private Bytes and Working Set for all three browsers on the
1.83GHz 2GB RAM client for the full range of tests listed in Appendix A.
Rather than chart the functions in the order that they were tested, they were
Sequencing charts by type brings
consolidated into groups. Aggregating the functions in this manner (rather than by
highlights anomalies and patterns are
easier to notice. product area or business flow) provides a much clearer picture and highlights several
points that might have otherwise gone unnoticed. The dashed lines denote each
section in the chart. The first section shows the browser and login screen followed
by menus, then by OAF/HTML screens, Oracle Forms and finally Gantt Charts.
Note that the last form, the Supply Chain Planners Workbench Form is a necessary
precursor to its associated Gantt chart. The last two sets of results are the same
Gantt chart, without and with data. It is important to bear in mind that the amount
of data in the Vision database is limited, but there is enough to show a
corresponding variation.

Figure 11: Working Set and Private Bytes for the Full Range of Tests

While the chart may or may not show the exact screens that you use, generalizations
While it is possible to generalize, the
provide guidelines for rough estimates. There are several distinct levels in the chart,
amount of data that is displayed may
dramatically increases the memory profile, which form the basis for the following generalizations:
especially on large Gantt charts.
• Menus: The amount of memory varies depending on the number
of items. It is interesting that Firefox 2 has the poorest footprint
when used with large menus. As well as being a reason to keep
menus small, this is important enough to warrant more
investigation, and is discussed in the Comparing Menus section.
• OAF/HTML Screens: Most of these have the same memory
profile peaking at around 40MB Working Set (excluding
Dashboards) with Internet Explorer (which also has the highest
memory footprint). Although self-evident, if you have memory
constrained clients, using OAF/HTML screens is preferable to
forms as they have a smaller footprint. This is something that you
may want to consider when creating your own custom or bespoke
applications.
• Dashboards: Although a part of the OAF/HTML screens group,
these differ fundamentally, as they render several graphs and
charts that have no associated data. As these graphs and charts are
rendered as graphics, the memory footprint is unlikely to change
regardless of the amount of data. It is notable that IE7 has a
substantially higher footprint.
• Forms: The first four forms have an almost identical footprint,
which is not surprising as they all use the same JAR files. The
forms between the Contact Centre and Customer Interaction History are
also very similar, although they tend to use different sets of JAR
files. The two exceptions in this group, which both have
significantly higher memory profiles as they are larger, are the Item
Costs and Order Entry workbenches.
• Gantt Charts: These have the highest memory footprint, and
again, are all very similar. The last two sets of figures show that
the amount of data being displayed does make a difference to the
amount of memory that they require. While the Vision database
does not contain much data, some customers have noticed
exceptionally high memory requirements with these charts and
therefore you may need to consult users to establish how much
data they regularly display on screen. If there is a performance
issue, then advise that reducing the amount of data (if possible)
will bring temporary respite while you determine the amount of
memory that they require.

Average Memory by Oracle E-Business Suite Component Type
If you use a range of products, then the generalized benchmark figures such as the
browser averages for the full suite of tests shown in Figure 12 may be more useful. If
your Oracle E-Business Suite usage can be broadly categorized into OAF/HTML,
forms, or Gantt charts, it may be useful to focus specifically on that area (bearing in
mind that there may be exceptions). This chart shows the average memory utilization
(Private Bytes and Working Set) grouped by type for Oracle E-Business Suite 12
using browsers with JRE across all of the tests on the 1.83GHz 2GB client.
Figure 12: Average Memory Utilization for Oracle E-Business Suite 12 Using JRE
Grouped by Type
If a browser uses more memory, the

To be more precise, you need to consider this chart and the amount of memory that
overall profile may reduce when each browser shares with the other applications that users typically run
considering the amount of shared memory. simultaneously. The amounts in this test as shown in Figure 1 are IE7: 9.6MB, IE6:
8MB, and FF2: 6.2MB. These relatively small differences indicate that Internet
Explorer 6 still appears to be the best choice for memory-constrained clients. Some
of these figures will be affected by the amount of data (such as Gantt charts,
customizations, and form folders) and it is important to note that these figures do
not scale linearly when using multiple forms or screens at the same time.
Reviewing the Ratio of Working Set and Private Bytes

The variation in Private Bytes to Working Set ranges between 5% and 30% for the
full set of tests. Examples of a very small difference include the Customer Interaction
History and Supply Chain Planners Workbench Form, with Firefox, and the Payables,
General Ledger and Project Forms with Internet Explorer 7. The original results are
shown in Figure 11. When the tests were repeated, the ratio increased, as did the
Working Set (marginally). As there was no change in the other applications being
used, you could infer that the frequency of tests resulted in the Windows memory
manager aggressively trimming memory.

It follows that if you restrict your measurements to Working Set in isolation, then
depending on the other applications that you use on your client, you could have
anomalous readings that would otherwise go unnoticed, even on a client with 2GB.
As noted in The Test Environment And Testing Issues section, it was surprising how few
applications it took to change the memory model. For this reason, you always need
to compare Working Set with Private Bytes to provide a check point that will ensure
that process memory is not being trimmed without your knowledge.
Looking more closely at Figure 11, a very specific pattern of the ratio of Working Set
Using different views of the same set of
and Private Bytes emerges, as shown in Figure 13. The percentage difference is
results sometimes helps to validate an
investigation. substantially larger during the first half of the chart (login and OAF/HTML) as
compared to forms, and then there is another smaller step change to the Gantt
charts. Both forms and the Gantt charts have a substantially higher memory
footprint. This either implies that the Windows Memory Manager was trimming to a
greater degree, thus dropping Working Set while Private Bytes stayed the same, or
perhaps that the different set of Forms used fewer shared memory objects between
them, thereby raising Private Bytes while Working Set stayed the same.
Figure 13: The Relationship between Private Bytes and Working Set
If you think it unlikely that Windows was trimming the process, you need to
consider other factors that may cause this behavior. For example, the amount of
shared memory, or some other memory structure, could vary between the different
types of forms and screens. As all browsers exhibit the same step changes, any
browser will show this effect. The amount of shared memory is determined by the
set of applications that are running simultaneously, and measurements from Internet
Explorer 7 are shown in Table 7. This shows that the difference between the
functions is minimal, in which case shared memory cannot be the reason.

Function Memory (KB)
Browser 9708
Login Screen 12344
OAF/HTML Screens 12444
Menu 12998
Oracle Forms 13400
Gantt Charts 13588
Table 7: Shared Memory by Product Group
Comparing Menu Memory Utilization

The memory utilization and the number of items in each menu are compared in
Keep menus small especially in low
Figure 14. The Main (Choose Responsibility) menu – (110 items) and Payables
bandwidth situations
(latency is not as important). menus (280 items) have relatively few items and display quickly. The final three
menus are substantially larger. Enterprise Asset Manager Menu (1200 items),
Manufacturing and Distribution Manager Menu (2650 items) and Order
Management Super User Menu (1650 items) take substantially longer and have a
larger memory footprint.
Figure 14: Menu Memory Utilization
Trimming a large menu results in a reduction of the memory utilization from 63MB
to 27MB; this represents a saving of almost 50%. With menus in particular,
bandwidth is the primary network constraint; latency has a much lower affect. For
example, for all latencies from 50ms to 300ms, the Manufacturing and Distribution
Manager Menu takes almost a minute to display on a network with only 256Kbps
available bandwidth, and almost two minutes with 128Kbps available.

Clearly, the memory utilization and bandwidth concerns are sufficient reason to keep
menus small whether memory-constrained, or working over a high latency or low-
bandwidth connection. This is true even though the memory utilization for multiple
forms and screens (as used in a complete business flow) does not scale linearly.
Firefox exhibits a high memory utilization compared to Internet Explorer, which
appears to scale more linearly in proportion to the number of items being displayed.
However, keeping menus small will reduce this difference between the browsers.
Some customers combine menus under a single responsibility, so they can take
advantage of being able to keep multiple forms open. If this is not something you
have considered, the only complication that you need be concerned with is profile
option precedence (user, responsibility, application, site) and ensure that the profile
options are set at user level (and not defaulting from the responsibility level).
As the time to display a menu was identified and logged as a result of these tests, you
Review Oracle bug 6329486 for possible
will need to review Oracle bug 6329486 for possible patches.
patches.
Comparing Memory Profiles across a Range of Clients

This test compares performance across four of the PC clients detailed in Table 2 that
represent the range of memory being considered (128MB, 256MB, 1GB, and 2GB).
Two salient factors are that the CPU and technology inevitably varies across the
machines (which is not relevant for this test) and that 128MB is below the minimum
Windows and Oracle specification. The software on the three smaller machines was
kept to a minimum of essentially Oracle E-Business Suite, Process Explorer,
ZoneAlarm, Norton AntiVirus, and the default set of background processes. Tuning
the Windows environment did not significantly affect the memory profile. A handful
of standard Windows tuning practices were employed to improve performance (as
listed in Appendix B), but all of them failed to significantly reduce or stabilize the
browser memory footprint.
The callouts show the Private Bytes (same Figure 15 shows the Working Set for the full range of tests and color-coordinated
color as the main chart) and Working Set callouts containing selected sections of Private Bytes, which can be easily mapped
(shown in red) for each of the four clients
back to the original client using the colors and/or machine specification. Including
full graphs for Private Bytes made the chart overly complex and hid some of the
detail.
As indicated by the browser offset shown as the first measurement in the chart, the
initial browser offset was not compensated for on the two smallest machines with
128MB and 256MB respectively. Both of these small clients have an almost identical
memory profile, though it took a very long time for the Gantt charts to be rendered
and the stability of the undersized (128MB) client was questionable due to the
amount of thrashing observed. The 1GB client starts by following the same
coordinates as the 2GB machine, until the memory requirements suddenly increase
with forms and Gantt charts. At this point the Working Set on the client with 1GB is
less than on the client with 2GB. Recalling that working set is the physical memory
pages that are dedicated to a specific process, the somewhat surprising conclusion is
that Windows must be aggressively trimming the process on the client with 1GB.
Although the pages will most likely be in memory (on the standby or modified list),
there is still a finite cost in recovering and making them available to the parent
process when referenced again.

Figure 15: Oracle E-Business Suite 12 Memory Profiles across a Range of Clients
The callout on the left shows a sample of the Working Set and Private Bytes for the
1.6GHz 1GB client. The ratio between these measurements appears exceptionally
consistent. Although they fluctuate through the remainder of the tests, they follow
the expected pattern (Working Set greater than Private Bytes) for all clients, until the
final stage of the tests containing the Gantt Charts. At this point, Private Bytes
(shown in red) exceed Working Set for all the clients with less than 2GB. Each of
the callouts on the right of the chart shows the Private Bytes and Working Set for
the WIP Discrete Job Workbench.
This represents a fundamental change in the expected profile, and is typically one
area where inadequate client memory results in performance problems and
consequently complaints from unhappy users. The worst profile and greatest
difference between the sets appears on 700MHz 256MB client, though to be fair, the
128MB client was really struggling for memory and so you would not expect
anything sensible from the memory figures. As you would expect, the 366MHz
128MB client also uses old technology, and so paging and other disk activity would
be slower than on the other clients.
Windows was trimming processes on a 1GB machine even when all running
If Private Bytes significantly exceed
applications were using less than 160MB. It is worth stressing again that if private
Working Set for the majority of
applications that have never been bytes exceeds working set for the majority of applications, either the client is running
minimized, run fewer applications too many applications, or (if all the applications are needed) you need more memory.
simultaneously or add memory.
Comparing Load Times for across the Range of Clients
Unlike OAF/HTML screens and menus, E-Business Suite 11i and 12 forms and
Gantt Charts will download the necessary JAR files to the local client when a form is
accessed the first time. For example, using JRE 1.5.0_12 the Purchase Order form
downloads 10.3MB of JAR files, whereas a Gantt chart may require 19.3MB of JAR
files (the exact figures vary with the functions in use). Once JAR files have been
downloaded, they remain valid for the browser session. They are revalidated if you
restart the session, but not if you switch forms or responsibilities.

Comparing Load Times across Fast Clients
The Oracle E-Business Suite load times were compared for the same four clients
used in Figure 15, for the full range of tests excluding the measurement for the WIP
Discrete Job Workbench with no data. Again, reviewing all the data in one graph is
cluttered, and therefore a range of graphs have been used. When reviewing the
charts, note that the Y-axis scale has been changed in order to highlight key
elements.
Figure 16 compares the initial and subsequent load times for two fastest clients.
Remember that JAR files need to be downloaded the first time they are used, and the
download time will be influenced by network characteristics such as latency and
available bandwidth. In high-latency situations, using a local proxy server will help to
alleviate network problems and improve download times. The client specification is
listed in Table 2. Although CPU benchmarks are not very representative, the
1.8GHz Mobile Core is allegedly equal to a 3.43GHz Pentium (non Intel sources),
though this has not been verified.
Figure 16: Comparing Initial and Subsequent Load Times
Accepting a small margin of error, the times for each of the clients for the initial
login and menu are comparable for each of the clients (menus do not use JAR files).
The times to load the large menus are relatively long, even though these are the
fastest clients in the test and they are being loaded over a low latency LAN.
The difference in client speed is very clear in the forms and Gantt chart sections. As
expected, the fastest machine (which usually commands a price premium) provides
the best response times. Downloading the JAR files is generally a one-off operation
and most of the time you will be working with locally cached (downloaded) JAR
files. The relative performance of the two fastest clients is very similar, bearing in
mind that both machines are very lightly loaded in terms of the number of
applications that are running.

The fastest client that commands (which a There is only about 2 seconds difference in response times between the two fastest
price premium) is not significantly faster,
clients even though they are a generation apart in technology terms, and one will
and the evidence suggests that CPU
cost more than twice as much as the other.
definitely less important than memory.
You can calculate the amount of time spent validating the JAR files by subtracting
the validated and first use figures. Notice that the graphs converge at two points in the
forms section. The reason is that in order to get to these forms, you have to navigate
through other forms, so the previous business flow validated the JAR files.
Comparing Reload Times

Changing the scale of your graphs may Figure 17 compares the load times for forms that were previously used in the same
highlight features that are otherwise
session. This is more representative of normal user operation (with cached and
difficult to notice.
validated JAR files) where users will iteratively cycle through the same set of forms.
Notice that the vertical scale has been changed to 100 seconds, which is a very long
time to sit waiting for a screen update. The 366MHz actually takes 172 seconds for
the final Gantt chart (Supply Chain Planners workbench) with the majority of the
time spent paging memory; the machine ended up in an almost unusable state.
Figure 17: Comparing Load Times for Forms Previously Used in the Same Session
Both of the smaller clients perform very poorly when rendering large menus and the
graphics-rich dashboards. While this chart provides an overall picture of what is
happening, expanding the Y-axis scale to 30 seconds, as in Figure 18 really highlights
the differences.
The slow clients almost match the fastest While technology does not generally scale linearly, the 366MHz is approximately
machines for OAF/HTML functions.
twice as slow as the 700MHz. The 366MHz appears to work almost as well as the
rest of the machines for small OAF/HTML forms and there is little difference
between the 700MHz and 1.6GHz, and not as much difference as you might expect
between the 1.83GHz Mobile Core (with a dual processor) and the 1.6GHz
Pentium.

Remember that the server used for these tests is very small and is not as fast as you
would expect in a production system. For example, if your target time for opening
the Purchase Order Workbench is five seconds, then you have some clear
information on which you can make comparisons, perhaps as a basis for allocating
newer equipment to customer-facing staff.
Figure 18: Comparing Load Times for Forms Previously Used in the Same Session
(expanded)
Although the first use times (without JAR files on the client) have not been included
for the 700MHz client, it is reasonable to conclude that they are substantially longer
than the 1.6GHz client. When you compare the measurements across Figures 17 and
19, you can see that when the forms have been used once in the session, that the
times to reopen the form are similar. One approach to extend the working life of
older technology is to have call centre staff start the necessary Oracle E-Business
Suite forms prior to starting their work shift, so that the JAR files will be validated
before using the forms in earnest when interacting with customers.
Comparing Load Times and Jar File Volumes

JAR files are stored in compressed format As discussed in the previous section, when a form is used for the first time, JAR files
and are transferred over the network
are downloaded to the client. If they have previously been downloaded, they are
before being uncompressed saving more
validated. Figure 19 shows the times for each of these events for Oracle E-Business
than 50% of the bandwidth.
Suite forms using JRE 1.5.0_12 with Internet Explorer 6 with the corresponding
JAR file volume (MB). In order to ensure consistency, the local JAR cache was
cleared between each test, with the exception of forms that were only accessible
through other forms. JAR files are compressed and are transferred over the network
before being uncompressed saving around 50% of the bandwidth.

Figure 19: Comparing Form Opening Times and JAR File Volumes
Form opening times are roughly This chart only includes the forms and Gantt charts, as these are the only
proportional to the volume of JAR files that
components that require JAR files. Although these components represent a subset
need to be downloaded and validated.
of the Oracle E-Business Suite, the sample should be reasonably representative. The
three lines representing the downloaded time, validation time, and volume of JAR
files (either downloaded or validated) follow a similar pattern. It is evident that the
form opening times are roughly proportional to the volume of JAR files that need to
be downloaded. As mentioned previously, converging time lines indicate that the
JAR files have already been downloaded and validated.
When JAR files are shared, the first time The speed of JAR file revalidation depends on a number of factors including the
use timings only apply to whichever form
application tier (or proxy server if applicable), network capabilities, and (to a lesser
is used first in that particular set.
extent) the speed of the client. On the 1.83GHz test machine, revalidating the JAR
files occurs at between 1-2 MB per second. As already mentioned, several forms
share the same set of JAR files and so the first time usage timings (including the JAR
file download or validation) will only apply to whichever form is used first in that
particular set. You can easily compare the JAR files for each of the forms by
reviewing the contents of the JAR file cache.
Network Traffic for Oracle E-Business Suite 12 with JRE

The next logical step after discussing the JAR file download volumes is to review the
effect on the network. In the example shown in this section, the JAR files have not
been downloaded to the local client representing the worst-case scenario.
The Wireshark network protocol analyzer was used to capture the network
information, which was then analyzed using Application Characterization
Environment (ACE). This provides the ability to visualize transactions over and
above what can be seen in a raw data capture, so that the characteristics of a
transaction, such as including TCP behavior, are visible.

As the definition of an application turn (app turn) varies, in this context an app turn is
said to occur when the flow of application messages changes direction, typically in a
request-response sequence. High application turns (20+) indicate a chatty
application, which will be negatively impacted by latencies occurring on a WAN.
ACE also counts each TCP port connection initial handshake as an application turn.
The worst-case performance scenario for The worst-case performance scenario for any customer occurs when JAR files are
any customer occurs when JAR files are
downloaded by a client. The amount of data, number of packets, and app turns for
downloaded by a client.
the first use are shown in Figure 20. Although JAR files only apply to forms,
including the full range of tests enables comparisons between the types of Oracle E-
Business Suite component. Restarting the browser and clearing the JAR and browser
cache between each test ensured that the figures are correct for each of the forms.
As expected, the Gantt charts have the highest network utilization; this will vary
depending on how much data is transferred. The dashboards also have a relatively
high memory profile transfer approximately 1MB, as compared to 50KB for the
other OAF/HTML screens.
Use the access paths shown in Appendix The exact volume of network traffic depends on how you access the forms and how
A to match the results in this paper. Using
you change responsibility. For example, network usage for the General Ledger Enter
alternate routes may produce different
Journals form starts at 5MB on first time use with no local JAR files. This reduces to
results.
200KB if you reselect it from the main menu, and reduces further to only 32KB if
you switch between forms within the responsibility.
This principle does not only apply to forms. If you do not clear the browser cache
and restart the session, the login network traffic reduces further from 240KB to
24KB. Note that as menus are not cached, the associated network download does
not reduce - another reason for keeping menus small.
This follows the same approximate pattern as the form opening times shown in
Figure 19. As you would expect, there is very little network traffic when secondary
forms are opened. You can deduce that components with the highest network
utilization will be most affected by high-latency and/or low bandwidth networks. As
an aside, if network latency is a concern, The Holistic Approach to Performance Tuning
Oracle Applications White Paper (although slightly dated and outside the scope of this
paper) showed that CPU compensates for latency over a WAN. If latency and
bandwidth are of concern, you may want to consider network compression and
optimization.
New users running open queries stress It is important to emphasize that the total amount of network traffic varies
every part of the technology in ways that
significantly with the amount of data and new users running open queries stress
had not been expected.
every part of the technology in ways that had not been expected.

Figure 20: Network Traffic (First Use – worst case)

COMPARING ORACLE E-BUSINESS SUITE 11i AND 12
Customers using Oracle E-Business Suite 11i have a choice of continuing to use
JInitiator or changing to the Sun Java2 Standard Edition Java Runtime Engine. If
you are using Oracle JInitiator and plan to upgrade your environment the following
documents may be useful:
• Oracle MetaLink Note: 124606.1 Upgrading Oracle JInitiator with Oracle
Applications 11i.
• Oracle MetaLink Note: 290807.1 Upgrading Sun JRE (Native Plug-in) with
Oracle Applications 11i for Windows Clients.
This section reviews the memory differences between Oracle E-Business Suite 11i
and 12 and then explores the technology choices available with Oracle JInitiator
1.3.1.29 and Sun JRE 1.5.0_12. At the start of the tests, JInitiator 1.3.1.28 was used;
by the end, 1.3.1.29 was certified and the tests were repeated. Although there was no
noticeable change in the memory footprint, this may not be the case with earlier
versions.
The Effect of Business Flows in Oracle E-Business Suite 11i and 12

The memory used by multiple forms and As mentioned several times in this paper, the memory used by multiple forms and
screens does not scale linearly.
screens does not scale linearly. It is very unlikely that this paper could match the
exact combination of forms and screens, client specification, and the specific
combination of other software that you use. Instead, general guidelines have been
provided that can be applied to your own environment as needed.
Attempting to find a formula that enabled the results in this paper to be scaled for
multiple forms and screens was abandoned as it became overly complex. Ultimately,
it is quicker to run the set of forms for your particular business flow and take the
necessary measurements. Figure 21 shows that client memory does not scale linearly.
It shows the memory profile of a single form (the Purchase Order Workbench), and
compares that to a set of four forms that are simultaneously open. The utilization
only increases by a few percent when the additional forms are opened indicating that
much of the forms code and mapped files (such as DLLs and JAR files) are shared.
The forms used for the test are shown in the chart, and none were minimized. The
difference between the Working Set and Private Bytes reduces when several forms
are opened, possibly indicating that Windows may be trimming based on the
application activity and an increasing number of potential threads.

Figure 21: Comparing Form Combinations
Comparing Working Set for Oracle E-Business Suite 11i and 12

Figure 22 compares the Working Set requirements for Oracle E-Business Suite 11i
and 12 using Internet Explorer 6. The comparison is limited, as some measurements
would not have been directly comparable due to menu path changes between
versions. If you want to perform the full range of tests, then you will need to
restructure some of the menus and apply Oracle patch 4469342 to enable
connections to the TCF Socket Server when using JRE for some of the functions.
Alternatively, you could consider changing Oracle E-Business Suite 11i to use servlet
mode.
The client memory is almost identical for The largest difference is approximately 2.5%, which could be considered within the
E-Business Suite 11i and 12 for this subset
bounds of experimental accuracy, especially given that measuring Windows memory
of tests. However, there are some
is not an exact science.
documented differences between Gantt
charts.
Figure 22: Comparing Working Set for Oracle E-Business Suite 11i and 12

Although this chart only represents a subset of forms and screens, it appears the
amount of client memory between E-Business Suite 11i and 12 can effectively be
classed as identical, and therefore client memory should not be a concern when
upgrading between the versions. There are probably some exceptions to this rule,
and therefore you should always perform your own tests.
While Figure 22 was restricted to Working Set for clarity, Figure 23 compares the
Private Bytes and Working Set for each release; this was included both in the
interests of completeness, and to check whether there was a change in profile. Both
versions are using JRE, and therefore as the Working Set is the same, you are
looking for any anomalies. As with Oracle E-Business Suite 12, there are different
levels for each type of product, but these are more difficult to distinguish on this
chart. As before, the Customer Interaction History has a small Private Bytes value, which
is unexpected and needs further research to find the cause.
Figure 23: Memory Profiles for Oracle E-Business Suite 11i and 12
Comparing Oracle JInitiator 1.3.1.29 with Sun JRE 1.5.0_12

Customers on Oracle E-Business Suite 11i have a choice of technologies. Figures
24a and 24b provide two different views of the same data that compare the Working
Set (including the browser offset) for a subset of Forms on the Intel 930 Core Duo.
Figure 24a continues the theme of low-memory clients, and clearly shows that the
combination of Internet Explorer 6 and Oracle JInitiator 1.3.1.29 has the smallest
footprint. This follows the expected pattern that newer technology has more features
and consequently a higher resource requirement. Figure 24b compares technologies
by browser, and more clearly shows that JInitiator has a lower footprint than JRE.
There are some clues to why this may be the case in the JInitiator \doc\changes.txt
file. JInitiator 1.3.1.29 refers to a base of JRE 1.3.1_20, and again this will have
smaller resource requirements than the later version of JRE 1.5.0_12.

Figure 24a: Comparing JInitiator 1.3.1.29 and JRE 1.5.0_12 by Technology
Figure 24b: Comparing JInitiator 1.3.1.29 and JRE

1.5.0_12 by Browser
All the evidence suggests that the best The amount of shareable memory is the same for both of the technologies, which is
combination for low memory clients is
what you would expect as they have a common base. For completeness, you need to
IE6 with JInitiator for
consider the effect of the shared memory component (as shown in Figure 1). You
Oracle E-Business Suite 11i and JRE with
IE6 for Oracle E-Business Suite 12.
would reduce the browser memory utilization by the following amounts: FF2 6.2
MB, IE7 9.6MB, and IE6 8MB. However, this fails to explain the difference. Bearing
in mind that even though the tests span a wide range of Oracle E-Business Suite
forms and screens, this is still just a subset of tests. However, all the evidence
suggests that the best combination for low memory clients is IE6 with JInitiator for
Oracle E-Business Suite 11i and IE6 with JRE for Oracle E-Business Suite 12.
RECOMMENDATIONS FOR LOW SPECIFICATION CLIENTS

There are several approaches to help ensure the longevity of any low-specification
machines that you have, while maintaining the necessary throughput to sustain your
business. The overall approach is to configure low-specification clients using the
technologies that provide the best performance and use the least memory for the
combination of Oracle E-Business Suite components and other software that you
use.

The key is to achieve best performance at zero cost by modifying the environment,
or deciding whether an upgrade will provide sufficient performance. This section
describes a number of zero-cost solutions. Although each individual change may
only return a small benefit, the cumulative tuning effect can be quite large.
Is a Low Specification Client Usable?

Low speed clients are almost as fast as Looking at the charts throughout this paper, you can see that a low-specification
more powerful clients for many
client can provide surprisingly good performance with OAF/HTML screens and
E-Business Suite functions. Memory is far
with several of Oracle E-Business Suite forms once they have either been opened or
more important than CPU speed.
previously used in the same session. In order to decide whether a particular client
specification is acceptable, you need to relate the performance directly back to
business requirements to ensure that acceptable throughput is provided for all the
transactions compiled during the Creating a List of Test Candidate Transactions stage.
Bearing in mind that the server used for the tests in this paper was very small, you
should expect to achieve form and screen opening times that are at least as good as
those shown in the charts. In addition to measuring the first usage and subsequent
times you also need to consider other effects, such as 100 users at a remote location
all opening a form for the first time and therefore downloading a new set of JAR
files. The impact is not only the network, but also the associated loss of productivity
while the network is saturated.
It is imperative to control the Windows Controlling the User Environment

environment on The importance of this section cannot be overstressed. Typically, performance
low-specification clients.
engagements involve users complaining about response times. Lack of control over
the user’s environment is a frequently a major contributing factor. There are two
very different schools of thought.
In the first approach, some customers roll out a basic image and allow their users to
make almost any changes. The second approach has customers expending a lot of
time and effort creating an image that is extensively controlled by strict policies.
Regardless of the approach, the key elements of a standard corporate configuration
are connectivity, security, and end-user applications. In general, allowing end users to
make a significant number of changes to the client environment usually degrades
system performance. Regardless of the machine, you can ensure a particular level of
performance by preventing unnecessary changes. Perhaps not surprisingly, the
importance of this increases significantly when resources are limited.
You will often find a higher incidence of end-user performance complaints in this
type of environment. User-instigated changes have accounted for as much as 30%
degradation in the time it takes to render a form. If you do not maintain at least
rudimentary control of the end-user’s Windows environment, not only will you have
to expend a lot more effort (and budget) on tuning the database, application tiers
and network to compensate, you may also need to upgrade the clients prematurely.
The Low-Specification Client Checklist

The following items provide a checklist that you will need to customize for your
environment and product mix:

• Add more Memory: If possible, add memory to old clients as this
It is worth repeating: Memory is far more
considerably improves performance at minimal cost.
important than CPU speed, but you also
need to consider the Windows • Tune the Windows Environment: In addition to tuning the browser, it is
environment.
essential to tune low specification machines in order to ensure their
usefulness and ensure adequate performance. Tuning Windows is well
documented and this task is straightforward. Appendix B contains a set of
high-impact recommendations that typically make a substantial difference to
the performance of the client environment. This set of changes were made
to the 366MHz laptop; bear in mind that old laptops had several technical
compromises and were generally not as fast as their desktop equivalent.
Although each change individually has a relatively small effect, they
collectively improved performance by 2-4 seconds when restoring a screen
from being minimized to being fully rendered. The following controls are
highly recommended:
o Prevent the use of high-resolution wallpapers, including high-
resolution corporate logos.
o Set Windows performance options to “Adjust for best
performance”
o Reduce the number of screen colors.
• Tune the Browser: Review the Factors Affecting the Browser Memory Footprint
section for guidelines on judicious removal of browser themes, toolbars,
codec’s, extensions, plug-ins, helper applications, language packs, and other
superfluous components.
Although the users might like additional • Use the Leanest Technologies: The best combination for low memory
features that newer browsers introduce,
clients is IE6 with JInitiator for E-Business Suite 11i and IE6 with JRE for
being able to achieve the necessary
E-Business Suite 12. Extending the longevity of existing hardware and
business throughput will keep their stress
level lower.
keeping user stress levels to a minimum is more important than new
browser features. This combination also provides the best possible
performance.
• Use OAF/HTML screens: Wherever possible, use OAF/HTML screens
in preference to Oracle Forms, especially if you are just reviewing
information. Not only are the client requirements smaller, but also there is a
smaller load on the network. This is something that you may want to
consider when creating your own custom or bespoke applications.
• Minimize the Number of Applications Being Used: Keeping the
number of applications that users run simultaneously to a minimum may
sound obvious, but needs mentioning. When there is little free memory,
Windows will reassign memory pages from idle programs, programs with
minimized windows, and eventually the program you are using. While
restoring pages that have not been reallocated to other programs from the
standby list may be relatively quick, there is a comparatively large penalty
when accessing the program from disk, or the page file.

• Minimize Unused Non-Oracle Applications as a Working Practice:
The Process Trimming section showed the relationship between the Working
Set and Private Bytes. Minimizing a form results in a substantial reduction
of the Working Set and therefore the physical memory dedicated to the
process; this is ultimately limited by Private Bytes, which is inaccessible to
any other process. When Oracle E-Business Suite forms start, the windows
tend to overlay other applications that are already running, as well as
browser windows. The benefit of minimizing all the other applications and
idle browser windows depends on the applications being used. Even if you
have a relatively large amount of memory, the tendency to run more
applications simultaneously and leave them on screen behind the
application being used can result in unnecessary paging. These situations
can be resolved by a change in working practice, i.e. do not keep
applications open if they are not going to be used for a significant period as
this will free up memory for use by the active applications.
Minimizing releases physical memory. An • Avoid Minimizing Oracle E-Business Suite Components: Minimizing
application that has been radically trimmed
an Oracle E-Business Suite form or screen increases the probability of
may take several seconds before it is
aggressive memory trimming, even when the released memory is not
responsive.
necessarily needed for other applications. Nothing can be done about the
static costs of reading back from the standby list, disk, or paging file, and
the Working Set pages will be aged if the form or screen is left idle for a
long period. However, as you have seen, you cannot explicitly affect the
memory management algorithm or processes. However, minimizing and
later maximizing a form that contains a multi record block causes a loss of
mouse focus within that block. It is therefore advisable not to use the
minimize form option until the resolution of Oracle bug 6041461 (as
mentioned in the Trimming section). Further information can be found in
Oracle MetaLink Note 393931.1 for Oracle E-Business Suite 12, and
290807.1 for Oracle E-Business Suite 11i.
• Keep Menus Small: Keeping the number of menu items as small as
possible not only helps to reduce client render time, but also alleviates the
load on the network. Without any patches, the Manufacturing and
Distribution Manager Menu took almost a minute to display on a network
with only 256Kbps of available bandwidth and almost two minutes with
128Kbps (for all latencies from 50mm to 300ms). There is another current
issue with this in that if you click on that responsibility, wait for it to render
and then decide to do something else first, the next time you select the
responsibility, you will have to wait the same time again. Review Oracle bug
6329486 for available patches.
• Consider Reallocation Rather than Purchasing: Create a list of
customer-facing staff and power users who all need fast response times, and
exchange their slower machines for faster machines from other parts of the
organization where the users do not need such powerful machines. This can
save buying new hardware whilst maintaining business throughput.
Starting forms before a shift is something

that you will find many people do as a Oracle E-Business Suite 11i and 12 PC Client Performance Page 48
matter of course. It is not that different

from starting your PC when you arrive at
the office.
• Start the Application Prior to the Work Shift: Several of the charts show
that the performance of the various machines in the test is very close once
the JAR files have been validated. Regardless of the speed of their
machines, in order to ensure the best possible performance, several large
call-centers have adopted the practice of having their end-users start the
applications that they are going to be using prior to the commencement of
their shift. Not only does this ensure optimal performance per se, it enables
staff to provide a more professional service; customers have to wait less
time, and the transactions take place more quickly.
Memory Optimizers
If you have memory-constrained environments, do not be tempted by memory

optimizers. Generally, their sole function is to access as much memory as possible as
quickly as possible, which results in the Windows memory manager shrinking the
Working Set (and hence the physical memory) assigned to other programs.
Effectively, this is comparable to minimizing every program (including those that
you were working with), with the memory later having to be faulted back from the
standby list – assuming that it hasn’t been moved to the free list and needs to be re-
read from disk or the paging file.
So, How Much Memory Does my Application Need?

Use Private Bytes and Working Set As mentioned previously, Working Set includes shared and private committed
together.
memory allocated to the process, but is usually overstated because it includes
memory shared with other processes. In contrast, Private Bytes is the memory
allocated to a process that cannot be shared by other processes remembering that
some may be paged rather than in physical memory. Private Bytes is probably the
most useful figure to use when trying to answer the question “How much memory is
my application using?”
Process Explorer can be configured to show Private Bytes delta. Positive delta values
show the process being allocated more memory, while negative value indicates that
Use Private Bytes and not Working Set to
memory is being released or trimmed. As an aside, although not generally an issue
identify program leaks.
any more, as memory can be leaked anywhere in the address space, Private Bytes (not
Working Set) can be used to provide evidence of a leak.
More Testing Tips

The biggest lessons learnt during this investigation were as follows:
• Make sure that you have a complete list of forms (or business flows) and
specific steps that you are going to measure at the start of the process.
• Use Process Explorer to provide detailed analysis of the environment.
• Record the spreadsheet row reference against each of the results, to ensure
that a slight change in names does not introduce ambiguity. This approach
helps sift through dozens of files when you are trying to drill down on a
particular issue.
• Avoid retests by exporting a full set of results from Process Explorer for
each test, to enable later drill down if anomalies ensue.

• Never minimize an E-Business Suite form or screen during a test, as the
process’s Working Set will be understated and test results invalid.
• Create graphs and charts as you go through the tests, as this will help you to
spot trends and patterns. It will also highlight anomalies that can then be
immediately verified or further investigated. Although common sense, this
may save time later when resetting the test environment.
• As Private Bytes does not include the shared memory that the process is
using, restart the browser between each test to ensure consistency,
regardless of whether you are measuring a single E-Business Suite form or
screen, or an entire business flow. This is how the tests were conducted for
this paper.
The evidence suggests that the Working Set may be automatically trimmed with a
single E-Business Suite form or screen open on a PC client with only 1GB RAM,
which will skew your results. This is why you need to monitor private virtual bytes.
If you use a similar specification client to those in this paper, you should be able to
take a few measurements on your system and then scale your results, thereby making
use of the charts in this paper. Drawing charts early in the collection process will
enable you to see patterns and trends more quickly, such as memory utilization
levels. Remember though, that there may always be significant exceptions to trends.
CONCLUSION
Memory is far more important than CPU for This paper is aimed at customers who are trying to extend the useful life of their
performance.
existing Windows clients, or trying to ensure that they specify an adequate client at
the optimum price/performance point. A rigorous approach is essential when
reviewing or planning for hundreds or thousands of existing or new clients, with the
first half of the paper providing a theoretical background for the testing and
terminology described in the second half.
Windows appears overly aggressive when reclaiming physical memory, and while you
cannot control the process, you can compensate for it to some extent by adopting
the good working practices outlined throughout this last section.
As stated, the best combination for low memory clients is Internet Explorer 6 with
Oracle and Microsoft state that adding
memory makes a significant difference to
JInitiator for Oracle E-Business Suite 11i and Internet Explorer 6 with JRE for
performance. This has been conclusively Oracle E-Business Suite 12. Oracle and Microsoft state that adding memory makes a
proven for the significant difference to performance. This has been conclusively proven for the
Oracle E-Business Suite. Oracle E-Business Suite. There is a very small difference in performance and
response times (about 2 seconds) between the two fastest clients. Even though they
are a generation apart in technology terms, one is double the cost of the other.
The importance of the Holistic Approach can be proven through performance
auditing. Not only does it encompass modeling all the salient factors in your test
Use the holistic approach to model all the
salient factors in your test environment. If
environment, but it also extends to consider auditing system performance of your
users have large amounts of data on- key critical business transactions over time. In one exceptional case, the users at one
screen at remote locations, make sure you site complained only after performance had reduced by 50% over the period of a
include all salient factors. year, which is something a performance audit would have highlighted much sooner.
A rule of thumb is that users will generally not notice any single change (positive or

negative) in performance that is less than 20%, especially over time. Consider the
case of an (expected) time of 10 seconds to open a form. Would you notice if this
either declined to 8 seconds or lengthened to 12 seconds over the course of a month
or two?
Put simply, if a users’ client is often seen to be thrashing and Private Bytes exceeds
Working Set for the majority of applications, the client is running too many
applications and/or needs more memory. The point of this paper is that costs
incurred in upgrading a range of perhaps geographically dispersed machines can be
prohibitive and maybe avoided by using the methodical approach provided in this
paper. Ultimately, you need to ensure that the desktop configuration is sufficient to
achieve the throughput necessary to sustain your business.

Appendix A: OAF/HTML Screens and Forms Used in the Tests
This appendix lists the forms and screens used during the tests. In order to be able
to compare results you always need to follow the same path, to avoid any deviation
that might affect the measurements.
Login Screen
Main Menu
User: operations/welcome
Payables Menu
Responsibility: Payables, Vision Operations (USA)
Enterprise Asset Management Menu

Responsibility: Enterprise Asset Management, Vision Operations
Manufacturing and Distribution Manager Menu

User: mfg/welcome
Responsibility: Manufacturing and Distribution Manager
Order Management Super User Menu

User: mfg/welcome
Responsibility: Order Management Super User, Vision Operations (USA)
Asset Inquiry: Query Screen

Responsibility: Asset Inquiry, Vision Operations (USA)
Function: Asset Inquiry: Asset Inquiry
Asset Inquiry: Detail Screen

Responsibility: Asset Inquiry, Vision Operations (USA)
Function: Asset Inquiry: Asset Inquiry
Instructions: Enter Asset Number: 100080 [GO]
Click on Asset 100080
Sales dashboard
Function: Sales User
View Payslip
Responsibility: Employee Self-Service
Function: Employee Self-Service: Payslip
Absence Management
Responsibility: Employee Self-Service
Function: Employee Self-Service: Absence Management

Customer Fulfilment Management Dashboard
Responsibility: Daily Supply Chain Intelligence
Function: Dashboards: Customer Fulfilment Management
Inbound Telephony Management Dashboard

Responsibility: Daily Interaction Center Intelligence
Function: Dashboards: Inbound Telephony Management
Payables Invoice Workbench (Inquiry) - APXINWKB

Responsibility: Payables, Vision Operations (USA)
Function: Invoice Inquiry: Invoices
Purchase Order Workbench - POXPOEPO

Responsibility: Purchasing, Vision Operations (USA)
Function: Purchase Orders: Purchase Orders
General Ledger Journals - GLXJEENT

Responsibility: General Ledger, Vision Operations (USA)
Function: Journals: Enter
Project Creation - PAXPREPR

Responsibility: Projects, Vision Operations (USA)
Function: Projects, Vision Operations (USA): Projects
Inventory: Item Costs - CSTFITCT

User: mfg/welcome
Function: Inventory: Costs: Item Costs
Instructions: Select: M1 (NB Screens are there - no need to click FIND)
Order Entry - OEXOEORD

User: mfg/welcome
Responsibility: Order Management Super User, Vision Operations (USA)
Function: Orders. Returns: Sales Orders
Contact Center - CSCCCCRC

User: service/welcome
Responsibility: Customer Support, Vision operations
Function: Customer Management: Contact Centre
Customer Management: Create Service Request – CSXSRISR

User: service/welcome
Responsibility: Customer Support, Vision operations
Function: Service Requests: Create Service Requests
Service Contracts Authoring: Launch Contracts – OKCEXPOR

User: lease/welcome
Responsibility: Service Contracts Manager, Vision Enterprises
Function: Service Contracts Manager, Vision Enterprises | Launch Contracts

Service Contracts Authoring: Agreements Form – OKSAUDET
User: lease/welcome
Responsibility: Service Contracts Manager, Vision Enterprises
Function: Service Contracts Manager, Vision Enterprises | Launch Contracts
Instructions: Select Tools | New
Enter: Operating Unit: Vision Operations
Enter: Category: Service Agreements
[Create]
Leasing Center – OKLCSHDR

User: lease/welcome
Responsibility: Lease Center Manager
Function: Lease Center Manager: Lease Center
Customer Interaction History – JTFIHGUI

User: lease/welcome
Responsibility: Lease Center Manager
Function: Lease Center Manager: Lease Center
Instructions: Click [All Customer Interactions] [OK] (On popup)
Supply Chain Planners Workbench Form – MSCFNSCW

User: mfg/welcome
Responsibility: Advanced Supply Chain Planner
Function: Supply Chain Plan: Workbench
Instructions: Select TST:M1
Select: Plans
Select: Constrained (Constrained Plan)
Click [Gantt]
Supply Chain Planners Workbench (Gantt Chart)

User: mfg/welcome
Responsibility: Advanced Supply Chain Planner
Function: Supply Chain Plan: Workbench
Instructions: Select TST:M1
Select: Plans
Select: Constrained (Constrained Plan)
[Gantt]
Enter: Criteria: Order Type
Enter: Condition: Equals
Enter: From: Planned Order
[Find]
WIP Discrete Job Workbench (No Data)

User: mfg/welcome
Function: WIP : Discrete - Job Workbench
Instructions: Select M1 [OK]
WIP Discrete Job Workbench (With Data)

User: mfg/welcome
Function: WIP : Discrete - Job Workbench
Instructions: Select M1 [OK]
Select: Filter [OK]

Appendix B: Tuning the Client
In addition to tuning the browser, it is essential to tune low specification machines in
order to ensure their usefulness and ensure they perform adequately. Tuning
Windows is well documented and this task is straightforward. The quality of advice
varies tremendously, and occasionally inaccurate or incorrect advice can be copied or
replicated, in part or whole, across a plethora of forums and sites. Look for pages
that discuss tuning myths and realities, as these tend to provide slightly better
information. It is important to reiterate: Always look for supporting evidence and
perform your own tests.
While many companies will roll out a locked-down corporate image, problems often
occur when users are allowed to make changes to their system. It is worth reiterating
the following recommendations, which have proved valuable for many customers,
and should be followed for low-specification if not all business machines:
• Prevent the use of high-resolution wallpapers, including high-resolution
corporate logos.
• Set Windows performance options to “Adjust for best performance” - This
will disable animation, and your tests should show that this has a significant
effect when rendering the screen.
• Reduce screen colors. Older technology is slow and problems increase
when video memory is shared with the core system memory.
• When demands for physical memory result in excessive paging, a fixed-size
page file is beneficial on clients with a slow disk, as Windows does not have
to manage the growth. Although less of an issue with modern machines, the
page file should ideally be located on a FAT32 partition, as this has less file
management overhead than NTFS.
This set of changes was made to a 366MHz laptop. Bear in mind that old laptops
had a number of technical compromises and were generally not as fast as their
desktop equivalent. Although each of these has a relatively small affect on its own,
collectively they can improve performance by 2 –3 seconds when restoring a screen
from being minimized to being fully rendered.
If you need to work on a single user’s client that seems to be running slowly, one of
the best utilities is Microsoft Autoruns as shown in Figure B1. This program shows
programs that are automatically started from the Startup folder, and from the Run,
RunOnce, and associated Registry keys. In addition, it shows the browser helper
objects you need to identify when investigating and trying to reduce the browser
footprint.

Figure B1: The Autoruns Screen

Appendix C: Windows Memory Internals
Each 32-bit Windows process has 4GB of virtual address space available. By default,
this is divided equally between applications (user-mode address space) and the Windows
kernel (kernel-mode address space). For example, application code, DLL code, and
variables are located in the user address space while the Windows kernel, page tables,
and system reside in the kernel address space. It is possible to increase the user space
beyond the 2GB restriction using 4-Gigabyte Tuning (4GT), but this is generally
only used on servers rather than client machines. Although it is less likely that you
will be reading this paper if you have exceptionally powerful PC clients, the use of a
larger application address space can provide considerable performance benefits and
may be something that you are considering. However, 4GT tuning is a trade-off as it
reduces kernel features such as the file cache, which can have an adverse affect on
some applications.
An application or process may reserve some or all of the allocated 2GB of user
address space available to it, regardless of the amount of available physical memory;
this reserved memory is referred to as virtual memory. The virtual address space
contains three different types of memory pages, which are defined as follows:
• Reserved - A process will start by using a set amount of physical memory,
but will also reserve a range of memory pages that it can use in the future.
This protects its memory from allocation requests by other processes. Note
that this is only an allocation of memory from its virtual address space, and
no resources are actually used in that it does not use any physical memory or
even reserve space in the page file.
• Committed - When a process needs to use address space that it already has
reserved, it has to commit it. During this phase, memory is allocated as either
physical memory, reserved space, or memory pages that are backed by the
reserved space in the page file. This allows for future operations by the
Virtual Memory Manager and Working Set Manager to trim pages from a
process out of physical memory and into the page file, or onto the standby list
if physical memory is needed by the operating system or another process.
• Free - In this context, free memory is memory within the process address space
that remains available to be reserved or committed. Attempting to access
free memory without first attempting to reserve or commit it results in an
access violation and program termination.
Virtual memory can far exceed the amount of memory that a process is actually
Virtual memory does not represent
using, either in real or paged memory. A process may reserve hundreds of megabytes
the real amount of memory
that a process is using. of address space from its pool of 2GB. For example, when a browser is started, it
allocates over 100MB virtual address space (this typically increases to between 500-
600MB with browsers running forms). As an example, Symantec Antivirus may have
a virtual address space of 150MB, but only using 38MB of physical memory. The
important point is that the majority of the pages will simply be reserved with the rest
either committed or free; this ensures that when the process grows, future memory
allocations will be from a contiguous address space. Consequently, virtual memory
does not represent the real amount of memory that the process is using and, possibly
to prevent confusion, it is not shown in the Windows Task Manager.

Private Bytes, Shareable Memory, and Working Set In More Detail
Recall that committed memory pages are backed by the page file or reside in physical
memory. To complicate the question of how to measure memory, committed
memory can be private or shared. These are defined as follows:
• Private memory represents the private virtual memory allocated to the
process and is committed memory that is protected and inaccessible by
any other process. It can reside in physical memory or the page file and
can be considered as the amount of page file space that would be
occupied if the entire process was paged out of physical memory. The
Performance Monitor counters Process/Private Bytes and Process/Page
File Bytes are the same as VM Size in Task Manager and Private Bytes in
Process Explorer (a free tool from Microsoft) .
• Shared memory can be shared by one or more processes. For example,
this could be an image, in which case the address where the image is
loaded is mapped to the address space of the process in question, or a
mapped file, such as a dynamic link library (DLL). As the name implies, a
mapped file is not loaded into memory, but each process will use
addressing to map (load) only the sections that it is using.
Shared memory reduces the overall physical memory requirements of the system as
not all the shareable memory is necessarily shared with other processes, and what is
shared by the application being measured may actually be mapped from another
process that was already running. Therefore, this analysis needs to measure the
amount of shareable and shared memory and consider whether this level of
complexity is relevant.
Process Trimming and the Memory Stacks
Each program has an allocated range of physical memory (its Working Set). If the
memory requirements of an existing process increase, or you start another
application and there is enough physical memory available, it is simply assigned from
the available pool of free memory without affecting other processes. However, if
insufficient free memory is available, Windows will trim (displace) memory pages
from other processes.
When Windows trims memory from existing processes, it places unmodified pages
The standby, free, and zero lists are added
on the Standby List, and modified pages on the Modified List (as shown in Figure C1).
together and the sum classified as
available bytes. Modified pages have to be written to the paging file before they can be transitioned
to the standby list. Importantly, these pages still contain the original data; if they are
subsequently referenced, a soft page fault occurs and the requisite pages are moved
back to the process’s Working Set in a memory-to-memory operation. If the
program references modified pages that have been overwritten (and moved to one
of the other lists), it will read original program code (such as a DLL) from the
original source on disk, or modified pages from the page file.
Standby list pages are transitioned to the free list. Once the free list has a predefined
set number of pages, the kernel pages thread executes to zero-fill the memory and
pages are transitioned to the Zero List, where they remain until they are allocated to a
new program or a process that needs more memory.

Figure C1: Windows Memory Lists
Although desirable, it is not possible to control Windows Working Set trimming

unless the program explicitly invokes it, for example, by using the
SetProcessWorkingSetSize API.
Which Processes will Windows Trim First?
Windows kernel memory consists of two sub-pools: the paged pool, which can be
paged to disk and the non-paged pool. The latter includes essential processes such as
drivers that cannot be paged out of memory. All processes have defined maximum
and minimum values for working set size. These can either be set programmatically
or more usually set to a default value, but the minimum is a non-zero value meaning
that an application can never be completely paged out of memory.
Windows will dynamically adjust the rate at which it examines Working Sets based
on memory utilization and the age of pages in the process Working Set. In order to
decide which processes are candidates to be trimmed, the Windows memory
manager examines each process. It compares the current memory allocation to its
minimum Working Set, the age of the page, whether it has been accessed since the
last Working Set trim, and other factors such as the number of hard page faults
(physical disk reads) that would be incurred.
It is difficult to monitor and interpret all the Windows memory lists and therefore
the best indicators that you have are Private Bytes and Working Set, and specifically
the ratio between them.

Oracle E-Business Suite PC Client Performance
October 2007
Author: Andy Tremayne
Contributing Authors: Robert Azzopardi, David Hunter
Oracle Corporation
World Headquarters
500 Oracle Parkway
Redwood Shores, CA 94065
U.S.A.
Worldwide Inquiries:
Phone: +1.650.506.7000
Fax: +1.650.506.7200
oracle.com
Copyright © 2007, Oracle. All rights reserved.

This document is provided for information purposes only and the
contents hereof are subject to change without notice.
This document is not warranted to be error-free, nor subject to any
other warranties or conditions, whether expressed orally or implied
in law, including implied warranties and conditions of merchantability
or fitness for a particular purpose. We specifically disclaim any
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Oracle is a registered trademark of Oracle Corporation and/or its affiliates.
Other names may be trademarks of their respective owners.

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Oracle E-Business Suite 11i and 12

An Oracle White Paper

Executive Overview .......................................................................................... 5

Oracle E-Business Suite 11i and 12 PC Client Performance Page 3

Oracle E-Business Suite 11i and 12 PC Client Performance Page 4

Why Not Just Skip to the Results?

Oracle E-Business Suite 11i and 12 PC Client Performance Page 5

The Importance of the Holistic Approach

Oracle E-Business Suite 11i and 12 PC Client Performance Page 6

Oracle Desktop Client Recommendations Required Recommended

11i MetaLink Note 232833.1 Processor 233MHz 1.4GHz + or higher

RAM 256MB Or higher1

Oracle E-Business Suite 11i and 12 PC Client Performance Page 7

Creating a List of Test Candidate Transactions

Oracle E-Business Suite 11i and 12 PC Client Performance Page 8

The Test Environment and Testing Issues

Oracle E-Business Suite 11i and 12 PC Client Performance Page 9

Oracle E-Business Suite 11i and 12 PC Client Performance Page 10

PC Clients Used in these Tests

Oracle E-Business Suite 11i and 12 PC Client Performance Page 11

366MHz 128MB This is the minimum specification client for Oracle E-

WINDOWS MEMORY DEFINITIONS AND MEASUREMENT TOOLS

Different Types of Memory

Oracle E-Business Suite 11i and 12 PC Client Performance Page 12

Figure 1: Comparing Shareable and Shared Memory

Choosing a Tool to Measure Memory

Undertaking meaningful measurements of the various types of Windows memory

Oracle E-Business Suite 11i and 12 PC Client Performance Page 13

Oracle E-Business Suite 11i and 12 PC Client Performance Page 14

Oracle E-Business Suite 11i and 12 PC Client Performance Page 15

Choosing Which Memory to Measure

Figure 5: Comparing Memory Measurements

Oracle E-Business Suite 11i and 12 PC Client Performance Page 16

Oracle E-Business Suite 11i and 12 PC Client Performance Page 17

Oracle E-Business Suite 11i and 12 PC Client Performance Page 18

Oracle E-Business Suite 11i and 12 PC Client Performance Page 19

Strart Purchase Order

Figure 6: Process Trimming -Working Set and Private Bytes Compared

Rules of Thumb – Private Bytes and Working Set

Oracle E-Business Suite 11i and 12 PC Client Performance Page 20

Oracle E-Business Suite 11i and 12 PC Client Performance Page 21

How to Map Integrated Browser Components

Figure 8: Internet Explorer 7 Manage Add-ons Screen

Adobe Acrobat Reader, Skype, and the Google Toolbar

Oracle E-Business Suite 11i and 12 PC Client Performance Page 22

Process PID Working Set Private Bytes

iexplore.exe 4680 39,900KB 28,612KB

Name Description WS Total WS Private

IEFRAME.dll Internet Explorer 3008KB 2328KB

Table 4: A Sorted Extract from Process Explorer

Oracle E-Business Suite 11i and 12 PC Client Performance Page 23

Option Working Set Private Bytes

Factors That Affect the Browser Memory Footprint

Oracle E-Business Suite 11i and 12 PC Client Performance Page 24

Deciding How To Scale Results

Baseline the Browser Memory Offset

Browser IE6 IE7 FF2

Working Set 20MB 30MB 25MB

Decide Which Scaled Approach to Use

The approaches considered to scale the results are as follows:

Oracle E-Business Suite 11i and 12 PC Client Performance Page 25

o Use a scaling factor based on the browser offset from Table 6 to

CAUTION! You cannot use this approach on a client running Windows XP