[Zope-DB] Zope-DCOracle2 vs Tomcat-JDBC performance

[Matthew T. Kromer]

Umberto Nicoletti wrote:

> Hi all,
> we're proud users of Zope, but recently we ran into some performance
> issues.
>
> We have some Zope applications that are database (Oracle) intensive and
> recently experienced some *huge* slowdowns when under heavy usage. We
> had no problems before because the usage was modest (under 5 concurrent
> users).
> Since this is SHOW STOPPER for us we decided to spend some time and 
> investigate further. We took a server and installed Zope 2.6.1, python 
> 2.1.3 and DCOracle2 1.3b on Suse
> Linux 8.0. On the same server we installed jakarta tomcat 4.1.24 with 
> Sun JDK 1.4.1_02 and Oracle JDBC.
>
> On another server (identical HW and SW) we have an Oracle 8.1.7 
> instance and so we ran some simple queries against it from Zope and 
> Tomcat.
>
> Result is that with small pages in both size and number of records 
> (under 5) displayed Zope is head to head with Tomcat.
>
> With larger pages (about 50 records displayed with no whatsoever html
> tables or other embellishment) Tomcat is MUCH faster (see below).


As Dieter pointed out, this is probably the security mechanim doing a 
linearly increasing cost to check each result you want to display in 
your ZPT.

The "easiest" thing to do to effect a speedup is to put the 
per-result-row renderer into an external method -- call it with your 
query results, and let it format the HTML to be placed back into your 
ZPT page.  This isn't necessarily elegant, but ought to do the job for you.

Alternatively, if you have tight control over your environment, you CAN 
look at replacing the Zope Security Manager with one with checks more 
optimized for your environment.  This isn't a trivial task, but it can 
be done.

-- 
Matt Kromer
Zope Corporation  http://www.zope.com/