Rational Team Concert For z/OS Features Performance Comparison Between Releases

Introduction

The performance data provided is obtained by benchmark test of each release.

Disclaimer

The information in this document is distributed AS IS. The use of this information or the implementation of any of these techniques is a customer responsibility and depends on the customer’s ability to evaluate and integrate them into the customer’s operational environment. While each item may have been reviewed by IBM for accuracy in a specific situation, there is no guarantee that the same or similar results will be obtained elsewhere. Customers attempting to adapt these techniques to their own environments do so at their own risk. Any pointers in this publication to external Web sites are provided for convenience only and do not in any manner serve as an endorsement of these Web sites. Any performance data contained in this document was determined in a controlled environment, and therefore, the results that may be obtained in other operating environments may vary significantly. Users of this document should verify the applicable data for their specific environment.

Performance is based on measurements and projections using standard IBM benchmarks in a controlled environment. The actual throughput or performance that any user will experience will vary depending upon many factors, including considerations such as the amount of multi-programming in the user’s job stream, the I/O configuration, the storage configuration, and the workload processed. Therefore, no assurance can be given that an individual user will achieve results similar to those stated here.

This testing was done as a way to compare and characterize the differences in performance between different versions of the product. The results shown here should thus be looked at as a comparison of the contrasting performance between different versions, and not as an absolute benchmark of performance.

What our tests measure

We use predominantly automated tooling such as Rational Performance Tester (RPT) to simulate a workload normally generated by client software such as the Eclipse client or web browsers. All response times listed are those measured by our automated tooling and not a client.

The diagram below describes at a very high level which aspects of the entire end-to-end experience (human end-user to server and back again) that our performance tests simulate. The tests described in this article simulate a segment of the end-to-end transaction as indicated in the middle of the diagram. Performance tests are server-side and capture response times for this segment of the transaction.

Findings

Based on following feature test data, we can get following summaries of RTC EE features from 4.0.2 to 6.0:

1. Performance of 'Promotion' feature has improved significantly (80%).
2. Performance of 'Deploy' feature has improved about 16.9%.
3. Performance of 'Package' feature is stable.

From 4.0.2 to 6.0.1, the overall performance improvement of the Promotion feature is about 80%:

*. From 4.0.3 to 4.0.4, promotion time has improved by 7% ('Generating list of binaries to promote' activity is the most notable improvement of 50% than 4.0.3).
*. From 4.0.5 to 4.0.6, promotion time has improved by 75%('Finalize build maps' activity is a remarkable great improvement of 96% than 4.0.5).
*. From 5.0.2 to 6.0.1, promotion time has improved by 23% to 37%('Generating list of binaries to promote' and 'Finalize build maps' are the improved activities).

Topology

The tests are executed in a Single Tier Topology infrastructure like the one in the following diagram:

Single Tier Topology: zLinux

The RTC server was set up based on WebSphere and DB2 on Linux for System z. The build machine with Rational Build Agent was on zOS.

Methodology

The sample projects for the test are:

• Mortgage Application *100 which is 100 duplicates of the Mortgage sample application
• Mortgage Application *1000 which is 1000 duplicates of the Mortgage sample application

In the repository the source code is stored in one stream with one single component which includes 5 zComponent Projects.

Enterprise builds are executed twice against each version.

Results

Run duration

Below charts show run duration comparing between 4.0.2 until 6.0.1 of each EE feature, and each feature of EE are run twice against each release and the average time is taken for comparison.

Package:
From below 'Package' feature runtime chart, each release has simliar runtime duration, no big improvement in this feature, but this feature is stable.

Deploy:
From below 'Deploy' feature runtime chart, it improved about 16.9% from v4.0.2 to v5.0.1 for MortgageApplication x1000.
Note - For v5.0, there was one regression issue but had been fixed quickly.

Promotion:
From below 'Promotion' feature runtime chart, this feature is continous improved release by release, it has been improved 80%. For the release by release comparison, it improved by 75% from 4.0.5 to 4.0.6 and 23% to 37% from 5.0.2 to 6.0.1.

Below 'Promotion - Single Changes' runtime chart is a special scenario desinged from v4.0.4 release, which shows peformance improvement of 'promotion with change set' feature.

Build Activities

Display all feature test results in one comparison table is too large, so seperate into 3 comparison tables and link to other page.

For EE feature test results, they are divided into following 3 comparison tables, please navigate to linked page for detailed results.

'Package' Comparison Results here

'Deploy' Comparison Results here

'Promotion(Full Promotion and Single Changeset)' Comparison Results here

Appendix A - Key Tuning Parameters

 -Xmn512m -Xgcpolicy:gencon -Xcompressedrefs -Xgc:preferredHeapBase=0x100000000
 -Xmx4g -Xms4g

* hard nofile 120000                    
* soft nofile 120000

About the authors

Main.Lu Lu

Questions and comments:

• What other performance information would you like to see here?
• Do you have performance scenarios to share?
• Do you have scenarios that are not addressed in documentation?
• Where are you having problems in performance?

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