Troubleshooting Web Deployed Oracle Forms Performance Issues (Doc ID 363285.1)

Last updated on OCTOBER 07, 2023

Applies to:

Oracle Forms - Version 10.1.2.0.2 and later
Information in this document applies to any platform.

Purpose

PERFORMANCE TUNING CAVEAT

Oracle Support will assist as much as possible with performance issues but performance issues vary. Therefore, some issues are more suitable for Oracle Consulting. This list is not inclusive but is a general guideline about which is the best Oracle group to utilize:

Oracle Consulting

1. You are preparing to upgrade an existing application to the current version of Oracle Forms. For example, from 6i to 10gR2, 9.0.2 to 10gR2, 9.0.4 to 10gR2, etc. In this case, all aspects of your environment and requirements need to be considered from OS/hardware resources/settings, DB tuning, application tuning, need for load balancing, need for an Advanced Application Server Architecture, etc.

2. You have just upgraded an existing application from a lower version of Forms/Application Server to 10gR2 and are experiencing unacceptable performance.

3. You have an existing application that serves a specific number of users with acceptable performance and wish to increase the number of users/and or performance by a specific percentage.

4. A well performing application starts experiencing poor performance with no known changes made to any Oracle product.

Note: In all cases, the primary method for determining the necessary resources for your application is the methodology described in the Oracle Forms 10g - Capacity Planning Guide . Because of the difference in resource requirements for different applications, there's no substitute for testing prior to deployment. There's no formula stating that if one has 'A' amount of memory, 'B' number of processors and 'C' processor speed that one will be able to support a specific number of concurrent users with acceptable response times.

Oracle Support

1. A well performing application starts experiencing poor performance after making modifications to Oracle product settings.

2. A well performing application starts experiencing poor performance after a patch.

If one chooses to rely on Oracle Support for assistance with performance troubleshooting/tuning realize that Oracle Support can make no guarantee on any specific performance metrics. Rarely is there one setting or modification that will result in a desired performance increase. Customers may need to open more than one SR with more than one Oracle group on a performance issue. Please see <Note 1352875.1> Oracle Support Policy on Oracle Forms/Reports Performance Tuning and Scalability Issues

PURPOSE

The purpose of this troubleshooting document is to assist System Administrators, Consultants, Developers and Support Engineers with the diagnosis of performance issues seen when deploying a Forms application over the web. For example, this guide will provide help / advice which covers complaints like:

The Forms Applet takes a long time to initialize
Navigation between items, blocks, canvases or forms is slow
Execution of SQL (queries, inserts, deletes from Forms) are extremely slow
Performance of Java Beans (e.g WebUtil) is poor
The application ran much faster when it was running in client-server mode!

One should also note that performance problems may be caused by any of the following which, by all means, is not an all inclusive list:

1. Non-Oracle products such as third party SW which may be conflicting with Oracle products or taking up large amounts of system resources. Oracle has received reports of third party anti-virus programs causing performance issues.
2. Inappropriate coding of Oracle development tool products such as Forms, Reports, JDeveloper, etc.
3. Hardware configuration/problems memory, disk, disk controllers, etc.
4. Network problems.
5. DB configuration or lack of tuning.

In general, if you have been actively working a performance related issue with Oracle Support for more than a couple of days, depending on the urgency of your problem, it may be time to bring in the appropriate experts for your OS and hardware. If the problem seems to be related to how your application is written or designed, Oracle Support can provide notes on general application coding guidelines, but Oracle Consulting may be needed and may be your fastest route to a resolution.

Note: the article will assume the reader is working with OracleAS 10g Rel 1 / Rel 2. Much of the advice, however, is relevant to earlier versions of web deployed forms e.g. Oracle 9iAS Rel 1 / Rel 2 Forms Services and to more current versions of such as 11g although the architecture for 11g is different. For 11g/12c, see <Note 1927863.1> Troubleshooting 11g Forms Performance Issues.