Performance

The webPDF server executes its PDF functions via web services. As of this writing, the server features seven web services. Several instances of each web service can be executed in parallel, i.e. per web service end point, several queries can be processed simultaneously.

tip

In the standard installation, a max. of two (2) instances of each web service will be run. This number can be increased with an additional license.

If all instances of a web service are busy with queries, then additional queries must wait and therefore their execution is delayed. Consequently, increasing the number of instances allows more queries to be processed in parallel and the overall throughput of the server also increases.

Adapting the instances

To improve the server’s performance, it is possible to increase the number of parallel instances per web service using the configuration settings in the administration area of the portal. This allows more queries per unit of time to be answered and the processing performance or data throughput is increased.

Sample for the effect of the instances on the throughput

Assumption: You want to convert Word documents to PDF documents and it takes 5 seconds to convert a single document.

Conversion of 20 documents:

• Two instances (standard license): Two documents in parallel in 5 seconds, which means that all 20 documents are converted in 10 (= 20 documents / 2 instances) x 5 seconds = 50 seconds.
• Four instances: Four documents in parallel in 5 seconds, which means that all 20 documents are converted in 5 (= 20 documents / 4 instances) x 5 seconds = 25 seconds.

In addition to the improvement in data throughput, the response times per document also improve. While in the first case the 19th and 20th document arrive at the client after 50 seconds, in the second case documents 17-20 are already at the client after 25 seconds.

caution

If the number of instances is to be increased, it may be necessary to adapt the license. Please contact support in this regard.

Adapting the memory and cores

If you increase the number of instances, it may also become necessary to adapt the hardware (CPU, memory). Especially the CPU usage increases with the number of instances. Consequently, it is important that the number of instances should be set in a suitable relation to the number of processor cores available on a system.

Also bear in mind that with an increasing number of instances, the memory requirements also go up. Adapt the available memory accordingly using the configuration files of the server.