Re: Performance over the web - Querying Oracle DB server over WAN

> Hi,
>
> We have several applications which access the oracle DB and issue
> queries. Usually these applications are very close to the database (over
> LAN). However some of them are going off-shore and will communicate with
> the DB server over WAN. Are there any commercial products that
> accelerate the communication with the Oracle DB?
>
> (Of course replicating the database is an option, but I would want to
> move away from it).
>
> Thanks,
> Ilan

The real questions are two:
1) How much data would you like to transfer over WAN? 2) How fast is the WAN?

The technology has to adjust to the physical reality. Did you do any measurement? There are some basic measurements that you can do. On Unix/ Linux platforms there is utility called ifconfig which will provide you with the statistics:

[mgogala_at_medo ~]$ ifconfig eth0

eth0      Link encap:Ethernet  HWaddr 00:21:97:46:F3:86  
          inet addr:192.168.1.100  Bcast:192.168.1.255  Mask:255.255.255.0
          inet6 addr: fe80::221:97ff:fe46:f386/64 Scope:Link
          UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST  MTU:1500  Metric:1
          RX packets:735707 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
          TX packets:668387 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
          collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000 
          RX bytes:639377227 (609.7 MiB)  TX bytes:176864365 (168.6 MiB)
          Interrupt:43 Base address:0xc000 

In the last line, there is the information about the number of bytes sent and received. Also, there are other, more professional tool for measuring the traffic as any network engineer worth his salt will tell you. Also, there are many caching technologies, ranging from the database specific, like x10 or more general, like memcached. There are also possibilities to manipulate the WAN itself and turn on packet compression, add some multiplexers. The applications itself will have to tuned as well. Use of the array interface will have to be rigorously enforced and the programming style should also be checked. The biggest problems usually come from the attempts to enforce business rules on the application side, instead of using triggers and procedures. In other words, your question is a rather complex one and answering your question is a project.

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