After posting Tuning JForum for JavaRanch, a couple people asked me offline about what I look for when tuning queries. Before The very first thing I do is identify the slow query and benchmark a “before” number.  This proves that there is something to optimize and lets me see if my tuning helped matters.  If [...]

JavaRanch has been updating our forum software to an extension of JForum.  While testing, Ulf Dittmer noticed that the RSS feeds were incredibly slow – to the point of timing out.  He found that the database query itself was taking so long that the browser gave up. Some of the queries built into JForum are [...]

I had an opportunity to do some tuning on postgresql and was pleasantly surprised at how smoothly it went. The first thing I did was try to run an “explain” on the query under discussion.  (Explain is a tabular or graphical view of the detailed steps the database uses to execute your query.  By knowing [...]