Rational Team Concert For IBMi Incremental Build Performance Comparison Between Releases

Introduction

The performance data provided is obtained by benchmark test of each release. The report includes build duration and links to the detailed build activities.

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 the test data, incremental build performance of the RTC for IBMi has improved significantly from 5.0.2 to 6.0.

From 5.0.2 to 6.0, "Collecting buildable files" activities during build preprocessing is the main improved activities based on the new buildmap mechanism.

From 6.0 to 6.0.1, "Collecting buildable files" activities has an improvement of about 60% for incremental build with all the RPG files changed. "Updating dependency data" has an improvement of more than 60%, which is a result of performance improvement of source code data scan.

Topology

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

Single Tier Topology: IBMi

The RTC server was set up based on WebSphere and DB2 on IBMi. The build machine with Rational Build Agent was on IBMi.

Methodology

The sample projects for the test are:

• Mortgage Application *100
• Mortgage Application *1000

In the repository the source code is stored in one stream with one single component.

Enterprise builds are executed twice against each version.

Test Scenario Description

After a complete build of all the programs, different changes are performed and a rebuild requested. These requests will rebuild the changed programs and impacted ones.

Results

Note : since 6.0.1 benchmark , we have replaced our IBMi performance testing LPARs and new performance baselines are created. 6.0 benchmark have been re-run to compare on identical hardware.

Run duration & Build Activities

The charts below show the run duration comparison from 5.0.2 to 6.0, and from 6.0 to 6.0.1. Builds are run twice against each release and the average time is taken for comparison. From 5.0.2 to 6.0, the 'preprocessing' of the build time is improved greatly when changing all buildable files, 'collecting buildable file' activity is improved almost 97%, total build time under this scenario is improved almost 68%.

From 6.0 to 6.0.1, "Collecting buildable files" activities has an improvement of about 60% for incremental build with all the RPG files changed. "Updating dependency data" has an improvement of more than 60%.

Links to the individual pages are provided for the detailed build activities.

Change one RPG file and execute build

Detailed build activities comparison for this test scenario "Change one RPG file and execute build" can be found here.

Change all RPG files and execute build

Detailed build activities comparison for this test scenario "Change all RPG files and execute build" can be found here.

Appendix A - Key Tuning Parameters

 -Xmn768m -Xgcpolicy:gencon -Xcompressedrefs -Xgc:preferredHeapBase=0x200000000
 -Xmx6g -Xms6g

About the authors

LuLu

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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