[...]... request process You should leverage the browser’s cache, cookies, on-page data (hidden fields or ViewState), proxies, the Windows kernel cache (http.sys), the IIS cache, the ASP.NET application cache, page and fragment output caching, the ASP.NET cache object, server-side per-request caching, database dependency caching, distributed caching, and caching in RAM at the database See Chapters 3 and 8 • 8 Focus... an ultra-fast site Particularly on the browser side of the performance equation, many small improvements can quickly add up to a large one Slow sites are often the result of the “death by 1,000 cuts” syndrome A few extra characters here or there don’t matter However, many small transgressions can quickly add up to make the difference between a slow site and a fast one, or between a fast site and an ultra-fast. .. performance Users are happier if they quickly see a response after they click It’s even better if what they see first is the information they’re most interested in See Chapter 2 Minimize blocking calls ASP.NET provides only a limited number of worker threads for processing web page requests If they are all blocked because they are waiting for completion of long-running tasks, the runtime will queue up... SP2 $$ Fiddler Web Debugger 2.3.9 Free download Firebug 1.10 Free download (Firefox plug-in) Firefox 11.0 Free download Internet Explorer 8 and 9 Free download Log Parser 2.2 Free download NET Framework 4.5 Free download Office 2010 Ultimate $$ Silverlight 5 SQL Server Free download 2012 RC0 Developer, $ Standard and Enterprise $$$ SQL Server Data Tools April 2012 Free download (VS plug-in) SQL Server... following: • Performance relates to how quickly something happens from your end user’s perspective, while scalability involves how many users your site can support and how easily it can support more • Ultra-fast and Ultra-scalable include more than just the performance of your web server You should apply speed and scalability principles at all tiers in your architecture In addition, your development... able to accept and process incoming requests Each machine will have its own local disk and separate caches at the operating system driver level (http.sys), in Internet Information Services (IIS), and in ASP.NET See Chapters 3 through 7 6 If the requested page needs data from the database, then the web server will open a connection to one or more database servers It can then issue queries for the data... /> One approach to addressing this issue is to adopt a policy of always having your URLs entirely in lowercase For dynamic content, it might also make sense to check for mixed-case incoming URLs in an ASP.NET HttpModule, so that you can detect and compensate for any markup or external sites that reference or generate such URLs To determine if this is an issue for your site, you could increment a performance... parallelism by simply adjusting the domain names in your pages, without having to manage which content is in which domain Consider automating the process of assigning static files to particular domains using an ASP.NET control adapter (see Chapter 7)—just be sure to use a consistent domain for each resource, to avoid unwanted cache misses JavaScript Grouping and Placement To reduce round-trips, you should have... view the source HTML for a site and see lots of comments The browser can’t use them, so they shouldn’t be there One way to avoid sending comments in your aspx files to clients is to enclose them in an ASP.NET comment block Here’s an example: For static files, you can remove comments as a post-compile step or as part of the installation and . Chapter 3: Caching 61  Chapter 4: IIS 7 .5 123  Chapter 5: ASP. NET Threads and Sessions 159  Chapter 6: Using ASP. NET to Implement and Manage Optimization. site faster?” (Chapter 4) • “How should we handle session state?” (Chapter 5) • “How can we improve our ASP. NET code?” (Chapters 5 to 7) • “Why is our