[lmi] testing actuarial_table performance

[Václav Slavík]

Hi,

On 23 May 2012, at 17:35, Vaclav Slavik wrote:
> Should you encounter performance problems with the XML implementation,
> this is a likely cause. I expect loading from XML to be considerably
> slower than the old binary format.

What would be a good way to test actuarial_table_rates*() functions' 
performance realistically? Is there some particular part of LMI that makes 
heavy use of them and that would be most affected by worse performance of the 
XML version?

I realized that I have some API design choices to make that depend on this, so 
I'd like to benchmark it myself.

If you're wondering, I'm considering two approaches to multi-dimensional 
tables: 

a) If acturarial table loading time is so small to be insignificant, then we 
can continue to load the tables for just one use in actuarial_table_rates() and 
then discard it. In that case, it would make most sense to load only a subset 
of the XML file corresponding to given database_index vector.

b) If, on the other hand, I worsened the performance in a perceivable way, 
we'll need to make changes to keep loaded and parsed actuarial_table instances 
around for as long as they are needed. In that case, it would be necessary to 
load the whole table into memory and use database_index when querying it for 
values.

Or would you prefer to do b) regardless, even if it's a more significant change 
to more code?

Thanks,
Vaclav