Performance Tuning and Optimizing ASP.NET Applications

This book addresses ASP.NET application performance tuning and optimization from a developer's perspective. Broadly speaking, this book addresses the following areas:

• Programming optimizations, including data access, state management, and caching technologies, including a chapter devoted to Web services

• Performance testing using Microsoft Application Center Test (ACT), including how to run tests, how to customize tests, and how to interpret the results

• Debugging and tracing tools for troubleshooting and tuning your application

The breakdown of chapters is as follows :

• Chapter 1 , "Introducing Performance Tuning and Optimization" : This chapter contains an overview of the goals of this book and introduces important concepts that affect the optimization of ASP.NET applications.

• Chapter 2 , "Introducing ASP.NET Applications" : This chapter provides an overview of how ASP.NET applications are structured and how they compile and run in the .NET-managed environment. This aim of this chapter is to give readers a common understanding of what comprises an ASP.NET application and to get them thinking of an application in terms of design rather than just code. This chapter starts the process of focusing you on those aspects of an application that most impact overall performance.

• Chapter 3 , "Writing Optimized Data Access Code" : This chapter discusses how to write optimal data access code and highlights issues such as connection pooling, conducting XML-specific optimizations, and choosing the appropriate data access object. It also provides a decision flow diagram and a detailed discussion on how to handle different data access scenarios.

• Chapter 4 , "Optimizing Application and Session State Management" : This chapter discusses how to manage application and session state in ASP.NET applications, including in a server farm.

• Chapter 5 , "Caching ASP.NET Applications" : This chapter covers the numerous options for caching in ASP.NET applications. ASP.NET makes caching quick and easy to implement, but this same simplicity can lull you into making the wrong caching choice. The aim of this chapter is to clearly outline the details of each caching option, including giving examples of when a specific caching option applies best.

• Chapter 6 , "Writing Optimized Web Services" : Web services are a specialized type of ASP.NET application. Web services require unique performance considerations given that they interoperate using SOAP calls. This chapter reviews specific performance considerations for developing optimal Web services.

• Chapter 7 , "Stress Testing and Monitoring ASP.NET Applications" : This chapter discusses the Microsoft ACT testing tool, which is used for stress testing ASP.NET applications. Performance tuning and stress testing is a critical aspect of developing and launching a high-performance Web application.

• Chapter 8 , "Debugging and Tracing ASP.NET Applications" : This chapter reviews tools and techniques for debugging ASP.NET applications and for setting traces. Debugging tools help pinpoint the locations and causes of application exceptions. Tracing tools provide a profile of how long it takes for a Web page to execute and render, thereby helping to pinpoint poorly performing areas in an application.

Each chapter is accompanied by a sample project that illustrates the concepts the chapter covers. Every code sample presented in the book comes from the sample projects. The code samples are never oversimplified and are designed to be useful for addressing real-world scenarios. Each sample project contains a starting page called menu.aspx , which provides a summary of all pages and modules in the project as well as hyperlinks to all of the pages. We have spent a lot of time making the sample projects both informative and interesting, and we hope you will recognize many productivity gains by following the code in these samples.

Finally, please note that this edition provides all code samples in Visual Basic .NET (VB .NET). We think it is more effective to present all code in one language, rather than to switch between different languages, especially given that most developers use one language exclusively. In the near future we want to publish this book in other language-specific editions, including C#.