How to
maximize performance of the Palo Web Client
Overview:
I. Design of OLAP Databases and Views in Palo
Web Client
II. Client Browser
III. Client
Hardware
IV. Tomcat
Configuration
V. Server Hardware
I. Design of OLAP Databases and
Views in Palo Web Client
The Palo Web
Client can internally handle very large dimensions, databases
and cubes but browsers need some time to show a huge number
of elements
in a combo box or in a table. Especially the dimensions
dropped to fill
the horizontal or vertical axis in the 2-dimensional table
area of a view
should be designed or structured in a way so that not too
many dimension
elements are shown at one time.
This can be
done by structuring the original OLAP dimension with enough
consolidated elements so that not too many elements appear
directly on
the root level and as children after expanding a
consolidated element.
But it can
also be done by using subsets or local filters for a dimension
in the Web Palo Client so that you get the same useful
result in the table
- not too many root elements or child elements directly below
a parent.
If necessary
simply add a new root level with one element called 'All' and
consolidate all other elements below this one or create a
local filter in
Web Palo
Client GUI where you select only needed elements.
II. Client Browser
The speed of
different browsers concerning script execution varies a lot.
For example
IE7 and IE6 are very slow but IE8 behaves fine.
Firefox 3.5 is faster than Firefox 3.0 and
Safari 3.0.4 is fast as well.
Still, for
views with a large number of displayed table cells the time
for the script execution may appear to be too long for the
used browser.
In this case
the browser shows requests asking if you want to continue
executing the script or stop it. If you stop it, only this
specific view
remains in an undefined state and you need to reopen it. You
can confirm
these dialogs every time they appear or you can modify the
default value
of the script timeout for your browser.
In any
browser it is possible to set this default value for script timeout:
Firefox
You can
modify the time how long Firefox waits before a warning appears:
a. Type ‘about:config’
in Firefox's address bar
b. Filter
down to the value for ‘dom.max_script_run_time’
c. Change the
value (in seconds) to something higher than the default
(which is 10 seconds)
d. Filter
down to the value for ‘dom.max_chrome_script_run_time’
helps
to set the same value for applications with chrome rights
Internet
Explorer
Please find
the information to modify the script timeout for IE here:
(based on the total number of executed script statements)
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/175500 (in your browser’s language)
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/175500/en-us/ (in English)
III. Client Hardware
As the
performance of the script engine of a browser also depends on the
CPU speed
of the client machine a faster processor is helpful.
For views
with a lot of displayed data cells the browser needs some RAM.
IV. Tomcat Configuration
The
default value for "Maximum memory pool" of the tomcat server is low
after installation. Set it to a higher value suitable for
your system.
We
recommend 1024MB. You can do this on a windows system within the
"Apache Tomcat Properties" or on a linux
system within the file:
/tomcat/bin/catalina.sh
with a line like:
CATALINA_OPTS="$CATALINA_OPTS
-Xmx1024m"
V. Server Hardware
The tomcat
server can simply be run on a workstation for testing purpose,
but for better performance it should be run on a server
machine.
For
example, Tensegrity runs the online demo on a linux
machine with only
one single core processor. For a production system we
recommend at least
dual core and/or multi processors. We also recommend 2GB RAM
or more.