SLA: Architecture

In terms of data architecture or processes in general, what processes can I implement in the IT department in trying to meet a SLA?

For example, I have a requirement to process a transaction in 45 seconds. My question is not specific to how to tune the database or application, but what kind of processes can I implement in the IT department to try to meet such SLA requirements? Something like design data model and application, and in the test environment, do load test and measure the time in the test environment. I know this is too high level, but am I in the right track? Is there anything else I need to consider?

Sounds like you're heading down the right track.

Some thoughts ...

- Define the Metric (i.e. When does the clock start, When does it stop)
- Define how to capture the metric (How will you Measure the processing time, will you capture each transaction, or average or ?)
- Define how to Report the results (do you report all results, do you report only violations etc)

If the SLA is 45 seconds and I'm designing a new application, is load testing in a test environment (as similar to production environment as possible) be enough?

Once I define the start and stop times, I would have to consider the network time on the client end. And obviously, we don't have control over that. How do I prove in an Oracle database that a problem caused was not our fault and it was their network problem, for example?