Previous Topic: Define the Performance Requirements

Next Topic: Analyze All Applications

Translate the Application's Requirements

You must translate the application's requirements into directory terms. Directory performance is measured in operations per second.

Example: Translate the Application Requirements into Directory Terms

An online banking application uses a directory as a repository for user authentication data. The application has an SLA (service level agreement) of 100 authentications (user logins) per second, as shown in the following diagram:

A banking application receives 100 authentication requests per second

This SLA is helpful for working out the performance requirement for the directory, but it is not enough to base a directory design on.

In this example, for each authentication, this application actually performs five operations on the directory, including a search to see if the user entry is present and an update to the “last login time” value.

This means that the performance requirement for the directory is actually 500 operations per second, as shown in the following diagram:

The application receives 100 authentication requests per second which results in  500 directory requests per second