Database Optimization
A leading provider of local community focused web applications with sites in more than 32 countries and over 600 cities. They are one of the fastest growing local community reach sites in the industry. Central to their offering is a housing share service which offers users the ability to post, search, and browse available units. The application performs a comparison of profile needs and provides updated category matches which users can view on demand or through automated emails. These services are delivered through a membership driven web based application and managed by local site administrators.
Skills Utilized
• Database Optimization
• Software Development
Technologies Utilized
• SQL Server 2005
• .Net 2.0
• C#
• ASP.net
• ADO.net
The core databases for the housing share solution were unstable and becoming more inconsistent as information and demand continued to increase. As new cities, countries, and application features were being added, the database integrity began to be noticeably affected and even resulted in frequent system downtime during critical peak activity periods. The client was losing revenue.
The business objective was to engage in a focused database analysis and performance review that would deliver an executable plan to make the databases more efficient and reliable while delivering in the fastest time to production possible.
The Digital Group’s database performance experts reviewed the existing databases to capture a baseline from which to measure stability and performance gains, as well as to create an optimization plan that identified top level issues. The engineering team then executed an iterative process of performance tuning, indexing, and script optimization while tracking measured results at the end of each milestone.
After stabilizing the system the team evaluated and implemented a database replication service that would significantly improve system performance while guaranteeing the platform’s stability without significantly impacting operational costs.
After completing the performance and stability operation, The Digital Group took responsibility for ongoing monitoring support and high level issue resolution. This activity is performed on a weekly basis from their Australia facility.
Through the use of the database monitoring and performance program, the client was able to achieve and deliver a new level of service without having to make a heavy investment in an application re-write. As a result, their product now offers its users an unmatched level of performance and usability which is now helping them to secure an even stronger market position.
Some of the specific benefits achieved include:
- Operational cost savings
- Utilizing high quality resources delivering immediate results
- Avoidance of application re-write
- Reduced down time and increased efficiency
- Increased performance through optimized scripts & queries
- Stability through replication
- Ongoing system monitoring identifies problems early