It's been my experience that using IBM BPM is a little like solving a Rubik's Cube:

* Everyone can attempt it.
* Most people can achieve something that is pretty close.
* It's extremely cool when you nail it.
* Knowledge and discipline are the key to getting it right.

One such nugget of knowledge relates to performance in test environments:

A couple of months ago I was asked to investigate the fact that a UAT environment was "really slow". I opened with my well-rehearsed lines on how important it is to capture tangible metrics to measure performance. These were patiently received before I sat down with the testers and discovered that the environment was indeed really slow. Specifically it took a very long time for Instances to flow through the process and for the next Task to become ready (even thought there was very little else going on).

Fortunately, I had seen something similar before and it turned out to be the same thing. It’s definitely worth having a high level understanding of how the Event Manager works in IBM BPM.

http://www-01.ibm.com/support/docview.wss?uid=swg21439613

kick-on-schedule
When this parameter is set to true, a newly-scheduled task forces the Event Manager into an immediate poll of lsw_em_task, to reduce the time between when a new task is scheduled and when it will be executed. This parameter helps with latency - a newly-scheduled "right now" task is executed almost immediately - but hurts overall throughput, because the TaskLoader ends up being more active than it would be otherwise. If the kick-on-schedule is false, newly-scheduled tasks are not picked up until the next time the Event Manager polls lsw_em_task (up to the loader-long-period), which will increase latency. However it also increases overall throughput by reducing the chatter and contention on the lsw_em_task table For a system with heavily loaded Event Manager, this parameter should be set to false.

Tuning Performance is a big topic with many levers to operate and dials to read. But I maintain that knowledge and discipline are the key to getting it right.

It makes me sad that they lived with this for 12 months and yet it only took five minutes to address. It's also by no means the first time I've seen this type of thing (and sometimes the appropriate nugget of knowledge is far harder to come by). In this day and age (i.e. the Internet Age) the IBM BPM forums are home to a small but highly knowledgeable and very supportive group of individuals. If you use IBM BPM, I personally guarantee that reading / participating in the forums will make you better at your job.


NOTE: Go here if you want to solve a Rubik's Cube or here if you want to understand how to solve a Rubik’s Cube.