Websphere 3.5 + MSSQL Server 2000 performance

Question

Hi,
I am developing a web application with WAS 3.5 and MS-SQL Server 2000. My application contains Entity and Stateless beans. When a single user is running the application I see that a bean method called from JSP takes about 4-5 seconds for retreiving data. Where as the same method takes 25-30 seconds when 10 concurrent users are running the same JSP. Why is the time difference so much. Where is the system lagging, at the Websphere level or the database level. Are there some settings to be done at the database level. I think the database is serving the request in queue, thus delaying the data retreival. How can this be removed. Let me add that once I bring the data and keep it in the session, then the subsequent call to the same JSP takes 4-5 seconds for 10 concurrent users. Now there is no database access, the data is taken from the session.
In a large web application we cant keep lot of session variables. How can we optimise the database server.

Answer 1

I'm assuming you're using database connection pooling as implemented in WAS. When you define a DataSource resource via the WAS console the default minimum connection pool size is one and the max is ten. You may want to bump up both numbers.