Databases Reference
In-Depth Information
CHAPTER THREE
Why It's Important
Database middleware is important to performance
because it plays a significant role in how your data-
base applications perform. Whether your database appli-
cation services a doctor viewing X-rays, a person getting
money from an ATM, a customer waiting for a credit card
transaction to process at a department store, or a handy-
man waiting for a paint color to match at a building sup-
ply store, the performance of your application depends
on your database middleware and how efficiently the
data is moved at high speeds with high user counts.
In fact, as we stated in Chapter 1, “Performance Isn't
What It Used to Be,” in a well-tuned environment, 75% to
95% of the time necessary to process a data request is spent
in the database middleware, so if the database middleware is
not optimally tuned, performance suffers.
In this chapter, we define database middleware, discuss
how it can affect performance, and focus on one important
component of database middleware: database drivers.
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