Oracle-L: RE: Cary's Book

From: Orr, Steve <sorr_at_rightnow.com>
Date: Tue, 07 Oct 2003 10:39:26 -0800
Message-ID: <F001.005D2493.20031007103926@fatcity.com>

So to define response time you must first define "response?" For acceptance criteria I guess the user has to be specific about what a response is, e.g., when a web app returns a database large result set to a web page, if you have to wait until they entire result set is transmitted to the client the response time would "appear" to be slower than if you just displayed the rows as they were transmitted.

Also, if we are to really address the business case as you suggest then the definition should also include the quality of the response. If the response is quick but incomplete and the user has to ask 10 questions to get at the one real answer he's after then what good is a fast response time?

-----Original Message-----
Sent: Tuesday, October 07, 2003 12:09 PM To: Multiple recipients of list ORACLE-L

I've got Cary's book for about a week now and I have a comment. On page 12
he defines response time as

"The elapsed time between the end of an inquiry or demand on a computer system and the beginning of a response; for example, the length of the time
between an indication of the end of an inquiry and the display of the first
character of the response at a user terminal."

I know from the reference provided that he did not create that definition
himself. Do you agree with it? I don't. I believe that "it depends" and that there are cases where the user would define response time as the time
from initiating the request until the entire transaction is complete, especially if subsequent work is dependent on the completion. You can easily play the "evil genie" in these cases by "improving" the response time such that the first character shows up sooner, yet the last character
shows up much later (in the vein of first_rows vs. all_rows), effectively
making things worse for the user. So even the definition of response time
comes back to the business case. Sometimes the user can continue with the
next task as soon as the first pieces of the request arrive, while at other
times she can not until the last pieces are complete.

Wolfgang Breitling
Oracle7, 8, 8i, 9i OCP DBA
Centrex Consulting Corporation
http://www.centrexcc.com

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Author: Wolfgang Breitling
INET: breitliw_at_centrexcc.com

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Author: Orr, Steve
INET: sorr_at_rightnow.com

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RE: Cary's Book - new topic