Mastering As/400 Performance

by Charly Jones, Jim Stewart, Rick Turner

Whenever we walk into an AS/400 site, we hear the same two “Make our system perform better” and “Help us figure out why our system is not performing well.” The size of the site makes no difference – the question of performance applies to small B-model systems as well as the largest Advanced Series RISC models. Unfortunately, solutions to perform problems are not always straightforward. Sometimes solving a request to make an AS/400 perform better is simple; however, the solution is often complex. Nevertheless, whether your system is small or large, whether you have a large staff or are a one-person shop, you have the same questions and many of the same problems. Tuning your system for performance is a matter of finding answers to your questions. Many answers are in the IBM documentation (e.g., Performance Tools Guide, Operator Guide, and Work Management guide), but they can be well hidden. There is no straightforward road map to better performance. The chal! lenge of performance tuning is understanding the workings and interrelationships of multiple parts of the system, such as communications, database, and hardware, as well as your end users and your business. In other words, having a good grasp of the big picture of performance tuning is a large part of finding a satisfactory solution. Most people can tune their own systems with some help and direction. Our intent is to help you tune your AS/400 when needed, but also to give you insight into monitoring and correcting performance problems before they become severe. You can use the material in this book regardless of whether you have a CISC or RISC machine. The primary difference is in the way the Timing and Paging Statistics Tool (TPST) and Sampled Address Monitor (SAM) are presented. On RISC machines, they’re now part of the Performance Explorer; CISC machine users can simply follow the book.

259 pages, Paperback

First published October 1, 1996