The NLINK® Server is both a high performance and highly scalable product. A number of design elements help the NLINK Server perform with remarkable speed. NLINK pushes interpretation of the meta-database to start time and creates all of the complex objects then, so objects are not instantiated during the day-to-day execution of the system. Additionally, the Workset Database resides completely in memory, so NLINK has almost instant access to all transactional data, with no disk I/O. Finally, the design of the NLINK CoNNectors® has been optimized to accept inbound data as quickly as possible without tying up the sending system.
LOAD BALANCING
Load Balancing allows NLINK deployments to scale gracefully as more and more transactional throughput is demanded of it.
Manual load balancing – requires explicit configuration of each External System and each copy of NLINK to spread the load evenly. This approach has the advantage of being simple to implement and gives the configurer complete control of the load balancing equation.
Dynamic load balancing – distributes IP traffic to multiple copies (or instances) of the NLINK Server each running on a host within the cluster. NLINK Load Balancing transparently partitions the client requests among the hosts and lets the clients access the cluster using one or more “virtual” IP addresses. From the client’s point of view, the cluster appears to be a single server that answers these client requests. As enterprise traffic increases, network administrators can simply plug another NLINK Server into the cluster.
REPLICATION
Replication is a form of local data caching on the NLINK server, used to boost performance. Some data from an External System, (SAP R/3, Oracle, etc.), is designated as replicable. This means that it is guaranteed to be constant over the period of the replication interval. By storing this data locally, NLINK can realize a significant performance boost by negating the requirement for a round trip request to the external system when it needs the data.
MULTI-THREADING
The NLINK Server is fully multi-threaded. Multiple transactions can be simultaneously processed, limited only by the number of available operating system threads.
To better understand the technical aspects of the NLINK Server we recommend that you review the NLINK Architecture White Paper. It describes the internal architecture of the various major components of the NLINK product suite, which includes the NLINK Server, NLINK CoNNectors and eXtenders, and the NLINK Configuration Module. In addition to a high-level architectural overview it goes on to discuss some of the more important features incorporated in each component and relates them back to the underlying product architecture.
