CGI-RPG performance question

[Loyd Goodbar <lgoodbar@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

I've almost completed a utility to help our shop create web pages for regular
tabular data. It is optimized for creating tables-based reports (i.e., convert
existing reports for intranet browsing). However, I have some performance
questions.

The application architecture is a service program that can be bound to ILE RPG
modules. The back end implements storage as user spaces in the job's QTEMP
library. The requesting program sends data to the service program through
prototyped calls, which stores the unformatted data in the user space. When
the requesting program calls for output, it specifies either standard output
or an IFS location (currently, only the IFS is implemented, and is the focus
of current testing). The service program reads the user space, formats the
data, then shuttles the data to its final location. I'm about 95% complete,
with the exception of writing to standard output and some control fields. So
far, the program works well, with the exception of some performance issues.

The major problem I have is two-fold. Since I've only implemented the IFS
portion, that's all I can test. However, the service program appears to suck
up major CPU cycles when formatting the data and/or writing to the IFS.
Consequently, I only get 1-2K/sec when writing a HTML page. In the current
report I test, I have a summary portion and detail portion, as two separate
pages that are hyperlinked. The summary portion is 30KB, and takes between
30-40 seconds to read the user space, format the HTML, and write to the IFS.
The detail portion is roughly 1.5MB, and this process takes around an hour!
(AS/400 model 720, 1GB RAM, 80GB disk)

I'm unsure where the bottleneck(s) lay.
1) When storing the data to the user space, I have turned on automatic
extendibility. Once the initial capacity fills, it takes noticeably longer to
complete data storage. Does OS/400 actually create a new user space with a
larger size, then copies the data, or simply extend the current space? Would
it be better to handle storage in a file, say keyed by handle and date/time
written? I don't know anything about data queues, but I do anticipate
generating pages up to 2 MB in size. All I need to do is store a varying
amount of data, and read it in FIFO manner. 
2) Reading from the user space appears to take little time, I'm not terribly
concerned here.
3) Formatting HTML. I take "unformatted" data, along with some control fields,
and generate the appropriate HTML code on the output stage. Currently, this
involves many %trim/%trimr operations on the output data. I am currently using
size 32000 workspaces for the data (since this is the current RPG/IV limit).
String operations take a long time. I thought about possibly passing data
through pointers, but I still need to concatenate the data to an output
variable before writing it.
4) Writing the data to the IFS takes some time. Disk utilization obviously
increases. Hopefully in the next few days I can implement standard output and
see if writing data is an actual bottleneck.

I'm hoping someone has done similar work before, and any tips would be greatly
appreciated.

Thanks!
Loyd
--
Loyd Goodbar
lgoodbar@ispchannel.com  ICQ#504581
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