We have a web service which provides search over hotels. There is a problem with performance: a single request to the service takes around 5000 ms. Almost all of the time is spent in database by executing storing procedures. During the request our server (mssql2008) consumes ~90% of the processor time. When 2 requests are made in parallel the average time grows and is around 7000 ms. When number of request is increasing, the average time of response is increasing as well. We have 20-30 requests per minute.

Which kind of optimization is the best in this case having in mind that the goal is to provide stable response time for the service:

1) Try to decrease the stored procedures execution time

2) Try to find the way how to unload the server

It is interesting to hear from people who deal with booking sites.