Understanding the Challenge

The holiday season brings unprecedented traffic to your order management system. Without proper preparation, this can lead to:

• Performance degradation
• System instability
• Order processing delays
• Poor customer experience

This document, along with the ongoing webinar series, provides insight into our proven best practices around customization patterns, configurations, testing, and ongoing housekeeping. As with all recommendations, be sure to test these out in a non-production environment to validate and tune to your specific environments and use cases.

Essential Diagnostics to Have Ready

Platform Diagnostics & Critical Metrics

Database (DB2)

• Lock waits (MON_LOCKWAITS)
• Current SQL (MON_CURRENT_SQL)
• Connections (MON_GET_CONNECTION)
  • OMS identifies DB connection using yfs.app.identifyconnection=Y
• Workload (MON_GET_WORKLOAD)
• Transaction logs (MON_GET_TRANSACTION_LOG)
• Package cache delta (MON_GET_PKG_CACHE_STMT)

JVM Profiling Tools

• IBM Health Center for Java
• Oracle Java Flight Recorder (JFR)
• Thread dump scripts (kill -3 PID or jstack -l PID)
• Verify container CPU/Memory limit and usage

Application Diagnostics

• TIMER & SQLDEBUG Trace capabilities
• YFS_STATISTICS_DETAIL table monitoring
• UI component diagnostics (console & network logs)

Performance Optimization Strategies

Database Optimization

1. Review and Apply Indices

• Ensure proper indexing on frequently queried tables
• Pay special attention to YFS_PERSON_INFO, YFS_CUSTOMER, etc. for customer searches

2. Query Optimization

• Avoid using UPPER function in queries
• Implement shadow columns for case-insensitive searches
• Clean up stale data from configuration tables

3. Connection Management

• Monitor connection pools and adjust as needed
• Identify and terminate long-running transactions

Application Tuning

1. API Usage

• Avoid open-ended list API calls
• Use adequate filters in all API requests
• Optimize output templates to retrieve only necessary data

2. Tracing and Logging

• Enable traces only at minimum required level
• Do not apply any tracing during peak hours as it can degrade performance severely
• Use traces for very short periods and disable immediately
• Implement TraceTTL to automatically disable verbose logging

3. Admin Utilities

• Restrict access to admin utilities
• Avoid using DB Query Tool for large result sets

Critical Workload Adjustments

1. Agent Management

• Halt complex order reallocation agents (like IBA)
• Disable non-essential purges (There are some purges like Inventory that you must run all the time)
• Ensure essential purge agents continue to run (e.g., Inventory Purge)

2. Capacity Management

• Avoid disabling capacity by setting infinite thresholds
• Configure appropriate capacity thresholds before peak season

3. Manual Activities

• Pause manual activity through API tester or DB query client tools
• Suspend manual reporting query execution
• Use Data Extract agent or scheduled reports instead

Backlog Management

1. Identify Contention Points

• Monitor database queries
• Check JVM resources and GC overhead
• Review container CPU utilization

2. Throttle Workloads

• Reduce threads and JVM instances to avoid contention
• Understand backlog by querying YFS_TASK_Q table
• Monitor queue depth regularly

Sterling Intelligent Promising (SIP) Considerations

1. Availability Operations

• Run availability snapshots only during off-peak hours
• Use reduced snapshots (delivery-method based)
• Apply minimum window of 30 days for zero-availability cleanup

2. Distribution Group Management

• Schedule DG updates/sync during off-peak hours
• Use Node + Item level DG sync for targeted updates

3. Network Configurations

• Avoid recompute network availability during peak periods
• Perform Node on/off activities only during low-traffic windows

Pre-Peak Preparation Checklist

Mitigation Tips

Engaging with Support

1. Team Preparation

• Confirm support contacts for all system components
• Define a 24x7 support schedule for peak hours
• Establish clear communication channels and escalation procedures

2. Immediate Response Plan

• Be ready to restart JVMs if necessary
• Prepare throttling strategies for overloaded servers
• Know how to reduce JVMs or threads quickly
• Have procedures to capture necessary logs and diagnostics

Conclusion

Proper preparation is the key to a successful holiday season for your on-premise IBM Sterling Order Management system. By implementing these recommendations, you'll be well-positioned to handle the increased demand and provide a seamless experience for your customers during this critical business period.

For more detailed technical best practices, refer to the IBM Sterling OMS Performance Guide and Technical Best Practices documentation.