Oracle8 OWS3 - Why so SLOW?

Hi all,

I have a problem that has to do with the performance of Oracle web applications.
I would like to explain the setup in the hope that someone out there can point out the possible places where serious tweaking needs to be done.

• My customer is running Oracle8, with Web Application Server3 on Sun Solaris 2.5.1 on a Sun SPARCstation 20 with 128 MB of memory.
• Currently there are 5 unique web applications running on this one machine.
• ALL of the applications are using the same Database Instance, ie. Instance "A"
• 2 of the applications are running on the same listener.
• The other 3 applications are running each with their own listener defined.

The problem is that the applications are not performing in a "stable" manner. With this I mean that in general on the first access of any procedure there is a 80% chance that the browser will be in "Host Contacted, Waiting for reply"-mode for almost a full minute or MORE. This is obviously not acceptable, since the would-be surfer of the site simply loses interest. The web page procedure would come up eventually, but it takes far too long.

Once the said procedure has come on screen, and I press reload, it is almost instant in the response I get. This seems to point in other words towards a possible caching problem. I have read somewhere that one can increase the cache-size of the listener, but try as I might I cannot find where to set this.

Aside from the fact that it could be a chaching problem, I have my doubts, since the procedure is not always fast on the reload, and could end up taking just as long.

We are quite sure this is not related to the traffic that is hitting the machine, but my current feeling is that the problem is one of the possiblities already mentioned. Maybe they're simply running too many applications on one machine?

If anyone has any thougths, or input on this, or any ideas how I could speed up the performance of these web applications, I would be most grateful.

Sincerely,
Rene Received on Wed Jun 17 1998 - 00:00:00 CEST