Software Architect's Handbook

Analyzing the results

Once performance data is collected through profiling, it can be used to identify performance issues and areas of the application that are bottlenecks. Bottlenecks are parts of the software system that limit performance. These parts in the software are unable to keep pace given their capacity and a particular amount of work, which in turn slows down the overall performance of the application.

The focus of the performance improvement effort should be on optimizing the bottlenecks of the application. Software architects should not focus their attention on optimizing non-bottlenecks unless all of the identified bottlenecks have been addressed and there is time to optimize non-bottlenecks.

Some common bottlenecks include ...