ASP.NET Core 2 High Performance - Second Edition

398 Pages·2017·12.725 MB·English

by  Singleton, James

ASP.NET Core 2 High Performance
Second Edition
Learn the secrets of developing high performance web applications using C# and ASP.NET Core
2 on Windows, Mac, and Linux
James Singleton
BIRMINGHAM - MUMBAI
ASP.NET Core 2 High Performance
Second Edition
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First published: June 2016
Second edition: October 2017
Production reference: 1061017
Published by Packt Publishing Ltd.
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ISBN 978-1-78839-976-0
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Credits
Author Copy Editor
James Singleton Muktikant Garimella
Reviewer Project Coordinator
Vidya Vrat Agarwal Ulhas Kambali
Commissioning Editor
Proofreader
Merint Mathew
Safis Editing
Acquisition Editor Indexer
Aiswarya Narayanan Tejal Daruwale Soni
Content Development Editor Production Coordinator
Vikas Tiwari Shraddha Falebhai
Technical Editor
Madhunikita Sunil Chindarkar
Foreword
"The most amazing achievement of the computer software industry is its continuing
cancellation of the steady and staggering gains made by the computer hardware industry."
–Henry Petroski
We live in the age of distributed systems. Computers have shrunk from room-sized industrial
mainframes to embedded devices that are smaller than a thumbnail. However, at the same time,
the software applications that we build, maintain, and use every day have grown beyond
measure. We create distributed applications that run on clusters of virtual machines scattered all
over the world, and billions of people rely on these systems, such as email, chat, social networks,
productivity applications, and banking, every day. We're online 24 hours a day, seven days a
week, and we're hooked on instant gratification. A generation ago, we'd happily wait until after
the weekend for a cheque to clear, or allow 28 days for delivery. Today, we expect instant
feedback, and why shouldn't we? The modern web is real-time, immediate, on-demand, and built
on packets of data flashing around the world at the speed of light, and when it isn't, we notice.
We've all had that sinking feeling... you know, when you've just put your credit card number into
a page to buy some expensive concert tickets, and the site takes just a little too long to respond.
Performance and responsiveness are a fundamental part of delivering a great user experience in
the distributed age. However, for a working developer trying to ship your next feature on time,
performance is often one of the most challenging requirements. How do you find the bottlenecks
in your application performance? How do you measure the impact of those problems? How do
you analyze them, design and test solutions and workarounds, and monitor them in production so
that you can be confident that they won't happen again? This book has the answers. Inside, James
Singleton presents a pragmatic, in-depth, and balanced discussion of modern performance
optimization techniques, and how to apply them to your .NET and web applications. Starting
from the premise that we should treat performance as a core feature of our systems, James shows
how you can use profiling tools such as Glimpse, MiniProfiler, Fiddler, and Wireshark to track
down the bottlenecks and bugs that cause your performance problems. He addresses the
scientific principles behind effective performance tuning, monitoring, instrumentation, and the
importance of using accurate and repeatable measurements when you make changes to a running
system to try and improve performance.
This book goes on to discuss almost every aspect of modern application development: database
tuning, hardware optimisations, compression algorithms, network protocols, and object-relational
mappers. For each topic, James describes the symptoms of common performance problems,
identifies the underlying causes of those symptoms, and then describes the patterns and tools that
you can use to measure and fix these underlying causes in your own applications. There's an in-
depth discussion of high-performance software patterns such as asynchronous methods and
message queues, accompanied by real-world examples showing you how to implement these
patterns in the latest versions of the .NET framework. Finally, James shows how you can not
only load test your applications as a part of your release pipeline, but you can continuously
monitor and measure your systems in production, letting you find and fix potential problems
long before they start upsetting your end users.
When I worked with James here at Spotlight, he consistently demonstrated a remarkable breadth
of knowledge, from ASP.NET to Arduinos and from Resharper to resistors. One day, he'd build
reactive frontend interfaces in ASP.NET and JavaScript; the next day, he'd create build monitors
by wiring microcontrollers into Star Wars toys, or working out how to connect the bathroom
door lock to the intranet so that our bicycling employees could see from their desks when the
office shower was free. After James moved on from Spotlight, I've been following his work with
Cleanweb and Computing 4 Kids Education. He's one of those rare developers who really
understands the social and environmental implications of technology; whether it's delivering
great user interactions or just saving electricity, improving your systems' performance is a great
way to delight your users. With this book, James has distilled years of hands-on lessons and
experience into a truly excellent all-round reference for .NET developers who want to understand
how to build responsive and scalable applications. It's a great resource for new developers who
want to develop a holistic understanding of application performance, but the coverage of cutting-
edge techniques and patterns means it's also ideal for more experienced developers who want to
make sure they're not getting left behind. Buy it, read it, share it with your team, and let's make
the web a better place.
Dylan Beattie
Systems architect REST evangelist, technical speaker
Co-organizer of the London .NET User Group
About the Author
James Singleton is a British software developer, engineer, and entrepreneur, who has been
writing code since the days of the BBC Micro. His formal training is in electrical and electronic
engineering, yet he has worked professionally in .NET software development for nearly a
decade. He is active in the London start-up community and helps organize Cleanweb London
events for environmentally conscious technologists. He runs Cleanweb Jobs
(https://cleanwebjobs.com/), which aims to help get developers, engineers, managers, and data
scientists into roles that can help tackle climate change and other environmental problems. He
also does public speaking and has presented talks at many local user groups, including at the
Hacker News London meet up. James holds a first class degree (with honors) in electronic
engineering with computing, and has designed and built his own basic microprocessor on an
FPGA, along with a custom instruction set to run on it. James contributes to, and is influenced
by, many open source projects, and he regularly uses alternative technologies such as Python,
Ruby, and Linux. He is enthusiastic about the direction that Microsoft is taking with .NET, and
their embracing of open source practices. He is particularly interested in hardware,
environmental, and digital rights projects, and is keen on security, compression, and algorithms.
When not hacking on code, or writing for books and magazines, he enjoys walking, skiing, rock
climbing, traveling, brewing, and craft beer. James has gained varied skills by working in many
diverse industries and roles, from high performance stock exchanges to video encoding systems.
He has worked as a business analyst, consultant, tester, developer, and technical architect. He has
a wide range of knowledge, gained from big corporates to start-ups, and lots of places in
between. He has first-hand experience of the best, and the worst, ways of building high-
performance software. You can read his blog at https://unop.uk/.
I would like to thank all of my friends and family for being so supportive while I was working on
this book. I would especially like to thank my mum and dad for getting me into science and
technology at a young age, and Lou for her limitless enthusiasm and positivity. I would also like
to thank Dylan for writing the foreword to this book. Writing a book is much harder work than
most people probably imagine, and I couldn't have done it without the constant encouragement.
Many sacrifices have been made, and I thank everyone for their understanding. Sorry for all the
events I've had to miss and to anyone who I've forgotten to thank here.
About the Reviewer
Vidya Vrat Agarwal is a software technology enthusiast, Microsoft MVP, C# Corner MVP,
TOGAF Certified Architect, Certified Scrum Master (CSM), and a published author. He has
presented sessions at various technical conferences and code camps in India and the USA. He
lives in Redmond, WA, with his wife, Rupali, and two daughters, Pearly and Arshika. He is
passionate about .NET and works as Principal Architect, Systems, with T-Mobile USA. He blogs
at http://www.MyPassionFor.NET and can be followed on Twitter at @DotNetAuthor.
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