Strategy for Web based Oracle application

We have developed a Web based Oracle application consisting of a PHP driven GUI, an Apache Web Server, and an Oracle DB.

Quite often, users complain because the Browser won't wait longer than 30 sec for query results to be returned. The real bad problem is that these queries seem to run forever, even when the user closes the Browser.

The reason for this is that while the user clicks on different buttons and does different choices, queries are composed by the PHP application in a "mechanistical" way. Resulting queries are syntactically correct, but have a horrible performance.

Perhaps the SQL code should be separated from the PHP code and put in procedures in the DB, that is, when they are performance-checked and otherwise validated. We would rather use Java instead of PHP the next time. Probably, some Rapid Application Development software could be used in our case, which would by itself provide some required features.

Now we decided to redesign the whole thing. Since we lack the necessary expertise, we will engage some contractors or a specialized company to do the job. The problem still remains that we need to define the specifications in order to avoid performance problems and any other problems typical for this kind of setup. Specifically, security has highest priority, beccause the application will be put on the public Internet at some time later.

At this point we are gathering information in order to develop a technical concept. Any hint, advice or reference to literature is highly appreciated!

Thanks in advance.

Rick Denoire Received on Sun Feb 01 2004 - 09:14:54 CST