Company
Date Published
Author
Andreas Grabner
Word count
1419
Language
American English
Hacker News points
None

Summary

Following the lifting of Covid-19 restrictions in Qatar, the Ministry of Interior's online visa application system, Metrash, experienced an overwhelming surge in traffic, peaking at 800 requests per second, causing service disruptions due to high CPU usage. The underlying issue was traced to the inefficient use of XPath for data parsing, which resulted in excessive memory and CPU consumption. By employing Dynatrace to analyze the performance bottlenecks, the team identified that transitioning to optimized data access methods significantly reduced CPU usage by 98%. This improvement not only stabilized the service but also prepared the system for future high-demand events, like the upcoming FIFA World Cup. The experience underscored the importance of proactive performance testing and highlighted Dynatrace's utility in diagnosing and addressing scalability challenges efficiently.