Re: Interactive Response Time

[thomas@xxxxxxxxxxx]

Phil:

On Thu, 13 December 2001, prumschlag@phdinc.com wrote:

> I have been asked to come up with a plan so that no user will ever have to 
>wait
> more than 30 seconds for an AS/400 interactive response.  The request (from 
>the
> company president) was based on a completely out-of-context observation of one
> user who had to wait 2 minutes for a response to one particular screen on one
> occurrence.  The president's intent is good, he just does not know what he is
> asking for.

>From seeing the other posts and your responses, I don't think you need much 
>more advice. Your plan was a good one from the start. But I do have one 
>suggestion on managing expectations.

I suggest you create a couple situations guaranteed to show long response times 
and ask your president how they should be handled. For example, bring a record 
up for update in one session but don't press <Enter>, i.e., establish a lock. 
Then try to update the same record in another job. Tell the president "I need 
your ruling on some things. The user at the first session has just gone to 
lunch. The second session user cannot update that record until the first user 
comes back. How do you want me to implement the 30-second rule in this case?"

I realize JDE might handle this specific situation through application code, 
but you can create the demos in other ways. Another possibility might involve 
waiting for a message to be replied to. There are numerous possibilities.

The point would simply be to make sure it was understood that it might not 
physically be possible for you to implement the 30-second rule without causing 
side-effects worse than long response times or requiring major programming 
effort.

Tom Liotta

--
Tom Liotta
The PowerTech Group, Inc.
19426 68th Avenue South
Kent, WA 98032
Phone  253-872-7788
Fax  253-872-7904
http://www.400Security.com


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