Performance is the measure of efficiency of a computerized business application, or of multiple applications running in the same environment. It is usually measured in response time and throughput.
Response time is the time it takes for a single task to complete. It is affected by:
Reducing contention and wait times, particularly disk I/O wait times
Using faster components
Reducing the amount of time the resources are needed (increasing concurrency)
Throughput refers to the volume of work completed in a fixed time period. Throughput is commonly measured in transactions per second (tps), but can be measured per minute, per hour, per day, and so on.