The Data Access Handbook: Achieving Optimal Database Application Performance and Scalability

The Data Access Handbook

Achieving Optimal Database Application Performance and Scalability

John Goodson • Robert A. Steward

Drive breakthrough database application performance by optimizing middleware and connectivity

Performance and scalability are more critical than ever in today’s enterprise database applications, and traditional database tuning isn’t nearly enough to solve the performance problems you are likely to see in those applications. Nowadays, 75-95% of the time it takes to process a data request is typically spent in the database middleware. Today’s worst performance and scalability problems are generally caused by issues with networking, database drivers, the broader software/hardware environment, and inefficient coding of data requests. In The Data Access Handbook, two of the world’s leading experts on database access systematically address these issues, showing how to achieve remarkable improvements in performance of real-world database applications.

Drawing on their unsurpassed experience with every leading database system and database connectivity API, John Goodson and Rob Steward reveal the powerful ways middleware affects application performance and guide developers with designing and writing API code that will deliver superior performance in each leading environment. In addition to covering essential concepts and techniques that apply across database systems and APIs, they present many API examples for ODBC, JDBC, and ADO.NET as well as database system examples for DB2, Microsoft SQL Server, MySQL, Oracle, and Sybase.

Coverage includes

• Clearly understanding how each component of database middleware can impact performance and scalability
• Writing database applications to reduce network traffic, limit disk I/O, optimize application-to-driver interaction, and simplify queries―including examples for ODBC, JDBC, and ADO.NET
• Managing connections, transactions, and SQL statement execution more efficiently
• Making the most of connection and statement pooling
• Writing good benchmarks to predict your application’s performance
• Systematically resolving performance problems―including eight start-to-finish case-study examples

If you’re a software architect, system designer, or database application developer, The Data Access Handbook will be your most indispensable database application performance resource. It’s the one book that focuses on the areas where you can achieve the greatest improvements―whether you’re designing new database applications or troubleshooting existing ones.

John Goodson is vice president and general manager of the DataDirect division of Progress Software, a leader in
data connectivity and mainframe integration. For 20 years, he has worked with Sun, Microsoft, and others to develop database connectivity standards such as J2EE, JDBC, ODBC, and ADO. He served on the ANSI H2 committee that built the SQL standard and now participates in the JDBC Expert Group and Java Rowsets standards committees.

Rob Steward, vice president of R&D at the DataDirect
division of Progress Software,
is responsible for the development, strategy, and oversight of the company’s data connectivity products. Rob has spent the past 15 years developing high-performing database driver and data providers, including ODBC, JDBC, and ADO.NET.

Both authors have spoken on database application performance at many industry events.

Visit www.dataaccesshandbook.com to get the code examples presented in this book and other supplemental information for DB2, MicrosoftSQL Server, MySQL, Oracle, and Sybase.

John Goodson: As the executive leader of DataDirect Technologies, John is responsible for daily operations, business development, product direction, and long-term corporate strategy.

John was a principal engineer at Data General for seven years, working on their relational database product, DG/SQL. Since joining DataDirect Technologies in 1992, he has held positions of increasing responsibility in research and development, technical support, and marketing. John is a well-known and respected industry luminary and data connectivity expert. For more than 15 years, he has worked closely with Sun Microsystems and Microsoft on the development and evolution of database connectivity standards including J2EE, JDBC, .NET, ODBC, and ADO. John has been involved with the ANSI NCITS H2 Committee, which is responsible for building the SQL standard, and the X/Open (Open Group) SQL Access Group, which is responsible for building call-level interfaces into relational databases. He is actively involved in Java standards committees, including the JDBC Expert Group. In addition, John has published numerous articles and spoken publicly on topics related to data management. John is also a patent holder in the area of distributed transactions for Microsoft SQL Server Java middleware.

John holds a Bachelor of Science in computer science from Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University in Blacksburg,Virginia.

Rob Steward: As vice president of research and development for DataDirect Technologies, Rob is responsible for the development, strategy, and oversight of the company’s data connectivity products, including the Shadow mainframe integration suite client software and the industry-leading DataDirect Connect family of database drivers and data providers: Connect for ODBC, Connect for JDBC, and Connect for ADO.NET. Additional product development responsibilities include DataDirect Sequelink and DataDirect XQuery, as well as the management of DataDirect’s Custom Engineering Development group.

Rob has spent more than 15 years developing database access middleware, including .NET data providers, ODBC drivers, JDBC drivers, and OLE DB data providers. He has held a number of management and technical positions at DataDirect Technologies and serves on various standards committees. Earlier in his career, he worked as lead software engineer at Marconi Commerce Systems Inc.

Rob holds a Bachelor of Science in computer science from North Carolina State University, Raleigh.