Database Administrator's Guide

Capacity Planning Considerations

An important part of architecting any computer software project is to understand the constraints of that system and ensure that they do not impede operation of the system. Constraints come from many sources:

• The physical limitations of the hardware (hard disk sizes, amount of memory, etc.)
• Limitations of the operating system (address space, number of processes/threads, etc.)
• Limits of other software with which it interacts (memory requirements, restrictions in the amount of data that can be passed between processes at any one time).
• And, finally, the software itself, which may have its own internal limits.

Any piece of computer software must be designed with these constrains in mind.

FairCom DB is designed to minimize the constraints it adds to the above list. As an industrial-strength, enterprise-ready database, FairCom DB is intended to be used in demanding applications. Developed by and for developers, FairCom DB imposes very few limitations on the application you design.

In addition to understanding FairCom DB constraints from a development point of view, this information can help system administrators keep the system running at peak performance. Several aspects of operation can be monitored so that action can be taken to avoid limits long before they are reached.

This document outlines the constraints of FairCom DB so you can better understand the best way to work with it.

Constraints

While c-tree is designed to minimize artificial limitations, there are a few constraints that should be acknowledged to optimize operation and allow developers to plan an efficient application. These few constraints are listed below and described in more detail afterward.