Tuning Message Agent performance

Who needs to read this section?

If performance is not a problem at your site, you do not need to read this section.

There are several options you can use to tune the performance of the

Message Agent. This section describes those options.

Sending messages and receiving messages are two separate processes. The major performance issues for these two processes are different.

Replication throughput The major bottleneck for total throughput of SQL Remote sites is generally receiving messages from many remote databases and applying them to the database at the consolidated site. You can control this step by tuning the receive process of the Message Agent at the consolidated site.

Replication turnaround The time lag from when data is entered at one site to when it appears at other sites is the turnaround time for replication. You can control this time lag.

Tuning throughput by controlling Message Agent threading

It is assumed in this section that you are tuning the performance of a

Message Agent that is running in continuous mode at a consolidated site.

Worker threads can be used by the Message Agent to apply incoming messages from remote users. This can improve throughput by allowing messages to be applied in parallel rather than serially.

Setting the number of The number of worker threads is set on the Message Agent command line,

worker threadsusing the -woption. The following command line starts the Message Agent for Adaptive Server Enterprise with twenty worker threads applying messages:

ssremote -c "eng=..." -w 20

The default is to use no worker threads, so that all messages are applied serially. The maximum number of worker threads is 50.

Performance benefits For the Message Agent for Adaptive Server Anywhere, the performance

from worker threads advantage will be most significant when the server is on a system with a striped drive array.

For Adaptive Server Enterprise, the Message Agent will benefit even more if the Server is used with multiple engines configured.

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Sybase DC38133-01-0902-01 manual Tuning Message Agent performance, Tuning throughput by controlling Message Agent threading