[Wikipedia-l] what's being done about performance?

[Lars Aronsson]

On Sat, 13 Jul 2002, Daniel Mayer wrote:
> Much is now being done to remedy performance problems -- so I do believe what
> you said is needlessly rude (even if there is a grain of truth to it).  This
> is an issue that has crept up upon the developers as new features were added
> -- many of which were asked for by the users.

If performance issues creep upon you, then you have not designed your
system for performance measurement and monitoring.  This means you are
clueless.  It is like driving a car without a speedometer, and being all
surprised when you are caught for speeding.

In the last week, my script made 410 attempts at 20 minute intervals to
reach the page http://www.wikipedia.com/wiki/Chemistry
Out of these, only 86% were served in less than 5 seconds.  Five percent
of the calls timed out (my limit is 60 seconds).  Now, this is far better
than the worst problems that Wikipedia saw in April or May, but it is
still pretty miserable.  The non-English Wikipedias feature very similar
numbers.

The Sevilla project (http://enciclopedia.us.es/) serves 96% of all my
attempts in under 2 seconds, and 99% in under five seconds.  This should
probably be attributed to luck rather than skill, but it helps move people
from the Spanish Wikipedia over to the breakout project.

> Software development seems to often work a lot like article development  --

That's OK, but just like the basic Wiki software defines the concept of an
article (it can be written, reviewed, its history tracked, modified,
removed), the software should define a framework for new functionality
that can measure its impact on performance, and turn it on or off.  Think
modules.


-- 
  Lars Aronsson (lars at aronsson.se)
  tel +46-70-7891609
  http://aronsson.se/  http://elektrosmog.nu/  http://susning.nu/