Performance By Design

Continuing a series of blog posts on “expert” computer Performance rules, I am reminded of something Captain James T. Kirk, commander of the starship Enterprise, once said in an old Star Trek episode: “There’s a lot more to running a starship than answering a lot of fool questions.” Star Trek , The Original Series. Episode: The Deadly Years. Season 2, Episode 12. See http://tos.trekcore.com/episodes/season2/2x12/captioninglog.txt . For some reason, the idea that the rote application of some set of rules derived by a domain “expert” can suffice in computer performance analysis has great sway. At the risk of beating a dead horse, I want to highlight another example of a performance Rule you are likely to face, and, in the process, discuss why there is a whole lot more to applying it than might be obvious at first glance. There happens to be a lot more to computer performance analysis than the rote evaluation of some set of well-formed performance rules. It ought to be apparent by now th...