Improving Web-Application Performance and Scalability

Summary

In this chapter, we covered many techniques for improving the performance of JSP applications. We discussed how to use the OSCache page-caching system to avoid regenerating a page for every incoming page request. Knowing that a database connection is an expensive operation that consumes processing time, memory, and network resources, we discussed the use of connection pooling to minimize the cost of this operation in JSP applications.

Performance and scalability are primary concerns for any JSP application. After a JSP application is deployed on a corporate intranet or on the Internet, it may become more popular than initially envisaged. If you apply the design practices discussed in this chapter, you have a much better chance of meeting your customer’s performance requirements and continuing to meet them as your user base expands. We showed you a specific performance-testing tool, Apache JMeter, which you can use during development to prove that performance and scalability requirements are being met.

As you read about JSP application frameworks in the following chapters, keep in mind what you’ve learned about designing for performance and scalability.