This chapter is from the book
This chapter is from the book
This chapter is from the book
The Database Driver
The database driver, which is a component of the database middleware, can degrade the performance of your database application because of the following reasons:
- The architecture of the driver is not optimal.
- The driver is not tunable. It does not have runtime performance tuning options that allow you to configure the driver for optimal performance.
See Chapter 3, “Database Middleware: Why It’s Important,” for a detailed description of how a database driver can improve the performance of your database application.
In this section, let’s look at one important fact about performance and a database driver: The architecture of your database driver matters. Typically, the most optimal architecture is database wire protocol.
Database wire protocol drivers communicate with the database directly, eliminating the need for the database’s client software, as shown in Figure 2-15.
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Figure 2-15 Database wire protocol architecture
Using a wire protocol database driver improves the performance of your database application because it does the following:
- Decreases latency by eliminating the processing required in the client software and the extra network traffic caused by the client software.
- Reduces network bandwidth requirements from extra transmissions. That is, database wire protocol drivers optimize network traffic because they can control interaction with TCP.
We go into more detail about the benefits of using a database wire protocol driver in “Database Driver Architecture,” page 55.