clipped from: h71000.www7.hp.com   
HP.com home

HP OpenVMS Systems


RMS Performance: Duplicate key chains


Hein van den Heuvel


Overview


Does your application use RMS Indexed files? Do you know what a SIDR is? Do you know what a duplicate key chain is? You probably should, since SIDRs and duplicate key chains can cause thousands of read I/Os as the result of a single record insert. With that, they can have a tremendous impact not just on the application doing the insert, but also on total system performance. Application managers, of course, notice a slowdown over time, and all too often they solve that by throwing more hardware at the problem. But what if you already have the biggest box on the market? Modest file tuning and a convert can help avoid all those read I/Os and restore performance. I have yet to investigate an RMS application that did not have this duplicate key chain problem. Maybe this is because I get called in only for bad cases, or because indeed so many applications have this problem, at least to some degree.