IBM RAD 7 and Websphere 6.1 is slow and unresponsive

Question

How can I improve performance when developing locally with Websphere and RAD? I am using one web application of moderate size (1000? classes) and it is impossible to handle the app locally on a Windows box. The Websphere 6.1 configuration uses the default configs. RAD7 is configured to handle a max heap of 1024mb. I thought about increasing the heap of the server. At present, the min and max are 128/300mb.

In terms of unresponsiveness, sometimes it may take minutes to load a page, if the page loads at all. Also, I disabled "Build Automatically" and Publish Automatically. Maybe those should be turned on?

Answer 1

I'm not sure about RAD7 but from my past experience, I'd suggest to give MyEclipse Blue a try.

Since that might not be an option, here are some other usual culprits, you can check:

• How much RAM does your machine have? It's good to give WS 1GB of RAM but if your computer only has 1GB of real RAM, it's going to swap itself to death. If your boss won't pay for it, go get some RAM with your own money. 2GB are less than $80 ATM. I suggest to get at least 4GB. Yes, Windows can only use 3.5GB even when 4 are installed but that half GB costs $20 or less. Even thinking about this for more than five minutes will cost more than simply buying it.

• Next make sure whether you are using the correct Java GC options. There should be some info about this in the docs. Plus make sure that the process uses the "jvm.dll" from the "server" directory, not the "client" one. "Process Explorer" will help.

• Since I'm not using RAD, I'm not 100% sure about "Build Automatically" and "Publish Automatically" but since RAD7 is based on Eclipse, these options will compile code in the background as you type. This will greatly reduce the time between you saving your last change and the moment the app server can start to load the new code.

• When all else fails, run websphere in a profiler and look where it spends all the time.