"dbping -s" and communication compression

[former_SQLA_member326303]

In the SQL Anywhere 12 - documentation (http://dcx.sybase.com/index.html#1201/en/dbadmin/connect-s-3835923.html) says that:

Using dbping -s can be useful to give an indication of whether communication compression may improve performance.

Is there a formal (or heuristic) rule, which, depending on the "Total Time" & "Average" - values ​​of the "Round trip simple request", "Send throughput" & "Receive throughput" - parameters tells whether to use communication compression?

[ian_mchardy · Accepted solution]

No, I know of no such heuristic.

I'd guess if all of the following are true (and these are ballpark estimates):

1. your send or receive throughput is slow (say 512KB per second or slower)
2. you are dealing with blobs, fairly large values or medium to large result sets
3. your data is fairly compressible
4. both your client and server have available CPU (i.e. neither is already at 100% CPU)

then communication compression is likely to improve your performance. Note that I wouldn't recommend communication on a LAN. But the only way to know for sure is to try it.

See http://dcx.sybase.com/index.html#1201/en/dbadmin/using-compression-perform.html

Hope this helps.