Summary
Despite all the changes in tools and diagnostic technologies in the past few years, Web application performance-tuning still relies on basic trouble-shooting skills and simple common sense.

This afternoon, in a busy hallway of the Moscone conference center at JavaOne, I got mixed up and got into the wrong line: instead of entering the "Web Application Stress Testing" session, I attended "Top Ten Ways to Botch Enterprise Java Scalability and Reliability" session given by Cameron Purdy.

Cameron's presentation was to-the-point, and very effective, as he mixed witty quotations from leading programmers, writers, engineers and philosophers with his humor and personal experiences. I enjoyed the session quite a bit since it was obvious that he had come across real-world and complex Web application tuning problems before.

The ten ways of botching were all common-sense ways such as: know your requirements, use common sense and assume nothing—take things with a grain of salt, or know where your application's bottlenecks are. This was for sure the best technical, real-life session I have attended in the past two days.

What I found amazing, however, was that almost exactly three years ago to the day I posted a web-application article on Artima, written with Jeffrey Blake, about my experience with web-application performance tuning. It would seem that nothing has changed in the past three years in about Web application tuning: no silver bullets and no easy ways out, just simple trial and error, hard detective work, and good planning.

A word of comment to Sun and the JavaOne organizers: JavaOne technical sessions are so much more helpful when they are presented by battle-scarred programmers and IT professionals who have been through the real-life drama of programming and solving IT issues. A lecture from a Sun or Java project team leader is simply just that: a lecture filled with theory, overhead slides, and void of real-life experience. I find it extremely valuable to learn from the actual work-experience of others as it helps me avoid problems that they have faced before.

If you feel you discovered any enlightening experience or tip solving a Web application performance problem in the past few years, please feel free to add it to the comments. Who knows, you may end up helping a software engineer solve his or her performance problem on time, and get him or her to go home in time to catch the late-night show.

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