Release It!

Summary

Resource pools can be a source of capacity-killing contention. Done well, however, they are a significant capacity enhancer. A connection pool eliminates up to 500 milliseconds from every transaction. Several strategies for connection management are available, each with benefits and drawbacks. These include the “per-page,” “per-fragment,” and hybrid models.

Caching is a double-edged sword. Done well, it will greatly increase a system’s capacity to support users. As typically practiced, caches can grow too large, cached items never get flushed, and cheap objects are cached with no benefit. Limiting cache sizes is crucial. Java developers should make use of the SoftReference objects to collaborate with the garbage collector ...