Purpose

In Confluence 7.16 we introduced the Faster permissions service, which changes the way permissions information is stored, allowing Confluence to check permissions on a large number of pages more quickly. It can provide a significant performance improvement in sites with a lot of content and complex permissions.

If you're not able to upgrade to Confluence 7.16 or later, the faster permissions service is available as an experimental feature from Confluence 7.12.3. 

Solution

Pre-requisites

• If you use SQL Server, your database user needs full create, read and write permissions for the database tables. Confluence must be able to create its own schema, and have the ability to create/drop triggers and functions. Refer to the SQL Server documentation for how to do this

• If you use Oracle, you must use Oracle 12c Release 2, there are known problems with Release 1 (which is no longer supported by Confluence). 

Use the faster permissions service

To enable the faster permissions service in Confluence 7.12.3 - 7.15.x:

1. Go to <confluence-base-url>/admin/darkfeatures.action
2. Enter confluence.denormalisedpermissions in the Enable dark feature field then select Submit. 
3. Go to <confluence-base-url>/plugins/servlet/fasterpermissions
4. Select Enable.

The status of each service will change to initializing as it starts up and begins to populate the new database tables. This may take some time depending on the size of your site, and is done in small batches to avoid any performance impact. Confluence is still completley operational during this time, and will start using each service as soon as the status changes to enabled. 

To disable the faster permissions service:

1. Go to <confluence-base-url>/plugins/servlet/fasterpermissions 
2. Select Disable.
3. Wait for the services to shut down. 

The additional database tables that were added when the service was first initialised will not be removed.