Designing WebSphere Application Server for performance: An evolutionary approach

Performance and scalability are critical elements for a successful Web site and therefore, are fundamental design criteria for the IBM WebSphere® platform. This paper focuses on the evolution of IBM WebSphere Application Server performance and scalability features, the improvements that were achieved, and directions for future work. There are three design principles underlying the success of WebSphere: (1) optimize the design for the predominant (no-failure) case, (2) make finite resources appear infinite, and (3) minimize the number of interprocess calls. We illustrate the application of these design principles in key areas, including workload management, Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) session management, back-end connection management, session data and content caching, and Enterprise JavaBean™ (EJB™) design and deployment patterns.