Ultra-Fast ASP.NET: Building Ultra-fast and Ultra-scalable Web Sites Using ASP.NET and SQL Server

477 Pages·2010·7.497 MB·English

by  Richard Kiessig (auth.)

Ultra-fast ASP.NET
Building Ultra-fast and Ultra-scalable Web
Sites Using ASP.NET and SQL Server

■ ■ ■
Richard Kiessig

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Ultra-fast ASP.NET
Copyright © 2009 by Richard Kiessig
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ISBN-13 (pbk): 978-1-4302-2383-2
ISBN-13 (electronic): 978-1-4302-2384-9
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Lead Editor: Matthew Moodie
Technical Reviewer:
Editorial Board: Clay Andres, Steve Anglin, Mark Beckner, Ewan Buckingham, Tony Campbell,
Gary Cornell, Jonathan Gennick, Michelle Lowman, Matthew Moodie, Jeffrey Pepper,
Frank Pohlmann, Ben Renow-Clarke, Dominic Shakeshaft, Matt Wade, Tom Welsh
Copy Editors: Kim Wimpsett and Tiffany Taylor
Production Assistance: Patrick Cunningham
Indexer: Becky Hornyak
Artist: April Milne
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Contents at a Glance
■About the Author .............................................................................................. xviii
■Introduction ......................................................................................................... xx
■Chapter 1: Principles and Method .........................................................................1
■Chapter 2: Client Performance ............................................................................13
■Chapter 3: Caching ..............................................................................................71
■Chapter 4: IIS 7 ..................................................................................................127
■Chapter 5: ASP.NET Threads and Sessions ........................................................161
■Chapter 6: Using ASP.NET to Implement
and Manage Optimization Techniques ............................................201
■Chapter 7: Managing ASP.NET Application Policies ..........................................229
■Chapter 8: SQL Server Relational Database .......................................................263
■Chapter 9: SQL Server Analysis Services ..........................................................349
■Chapter 10: Infrastructure and Operations ........................................................385
■Chapter 11: Putting It All Together ....................................................................411
■Glossary .............................................................................................................435
■Index ..................................................................................................................439

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■CONTENTS

Contents
■About the Author .............................................................................................. xviii
■About the Technical Reviewer ............................................................................ xix
■Introduction ......................................................................................................... xx
■Chapter 1: Principles and Method .........................................................................1
The Difference Between Performance and Scalability ................................................... 2
Why Ultra-fast and Ultra-scalable? ................................................................................. 2
Optimization .......................................................................................................................................... 3
Process .................................................................................................................................................. 4
The Full Experience ............................................................................................................................... 5
End-to-End Web Page Processing .................................................................................. 5
Overview of Principles .................................................................................................... 8
Performance Principles ......................................................................................................................... 8
Secondary Techniques .......................................................................................................................... 9
Environment and Tools Used in This Book .................................................................... 10
Software Tools and Versions ............................................................................................................... 10
Terminology ......................................................................................................................................... 11
Typographic Conventions .................................................................................................................... 11
Author’s Web Site ................................................................................................................................ 12
Summary ...................................................................................................................... 12
■Chapter 2: Client Performance ............................................................................13
Browser Page Processing ............................................................................................. 14
Network Connections and the Initial HTTP Request ............................................................................ 14
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■ CONTENTS

Page Parsing and New Resource Requests ......................................................................................... 16
Page Resource Order and Reordering ................................................................................................. 17
Browser Caching .......................................................................................................... 18
Network Optimizations ................................................................................................. 19
Script Include File Handling .......................................................................................... 21
Increase Parallelism by Queuing Resources Before Scripts ................................................................ 22
Minimize the Number of Script Files ................................................................................................... 23
Requesting Objects After the Rest of the Page .................................................................................... 26
Script Defer ......................................................................................................................................... 26
Server-Side Alternatives to Script ....................................................................................................... 26
Download Less ............................................................................................................. 27
Reduce the Number of Resources per Page ........................................................................................ 27
Minify Your HTML, CSS, and JavaScript .............................................................................................. 28
Maximize Compressibility .................................................................................................................... 30
Image Optimization .............................................................................................................................. 30
Web Site Icon File ................................................................................................................................ 34
General HTML, CSS, and JavaScript Optimization ............................................................................... 35
Using JavaScript to Gate Page Requests ...................................................................... 39
Submit Buttons .................................................................................................................................... 39
Links .................................................................................................................................................... 40
Using JavaScript to Reduce HTML Size ........................................................................ 41
Generate Repetitive HTML ................................................................................................................... 41
Add Repetitive Text to Your Tags ......................................................................................................... 43
Upload Less .................................................................................................................. 43
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CSS Optimizations ........................................................................................................ 45
Image Sprites and Clustering ....................................................................................... 49
Leveraging DHTML ........................................................................................................ 52
Using Ajax ..................................................................................................................... 52
Using Silverlight ............................................................................................................ 55
Building HTML Controls ....................................................................................................................... 55
Calling into Silverlight from JavaScript ............................................................................................... 58
Other Ways to Use Silverlight to Improve Performance ....................................................................... 59
Improving Rendering Speed ......................................................................................... 60
Precaching .................................................................................................................... 61
Precaching Images .............................................................................................................................. 62
Precaching CSS and JavaScript .......................................................................................................... 62
Tableless Layout Using CSS ......................................................................................... 64
Optimizing JavaScript Performance ............................................................................. 66
Summary ...................................................................................................................... 67
■Chapter 3: Caching ..............................................................................................71
Caching at All Tiers ....................................................................................................... 72
Browser Cache ............................................................................................................. 73
Caching Static Content ........................................................................................................................ 73
Caching Dynamic Content ................................................................................................................... 76
ViewState ...................................................................................................................... 78
Protecting ViewState Data Integrity ..................................................................................................... 79
Cookies ......................................................................................................................... 85
Setting Session Cookies ...................................................................................................................... 86
Multiple Name/Value Pairs in a Single Cookie ..................................................................................... 86
Cookie Properties ................................................................................................................................ 86
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Silverlight Isolated Storage ........................................................................................... 96
Sample Application: “Welcome Back” ................................................................................................ 96
Deploying and Updating Silverlight Applications ............................................................................... 101
Proxy Cache ................................................................................................................ 101
Using the Cache-Control HTTP Header .............................................................................................. 102
Managing Different Versions of the Same Content............................................................................ 103
Web Server Cache ...................................................................................................... 103
Windows Kernel Cache ...................................................................................................................... 104
IIS 7 Output Caching .......................................................................................................................... 109
ASP.NET Output Caching ................................................................................................................... 110
ASP.NET Object Caching .................................................................................................................... 117
SQL Server Caching .................................................................................................... 122
Distributed Caching .................................................................................................... 123
Cache Expiration Times .............................................................................................. 124
Dynamic Content ............................................................................................................................... 124
Static Content .................................................................................................................................... 124
Summary .................................................................................................................... 125
■Chapter 4: IIS 7 ..................................................................................................127
Application Pools and Web Gardens ........................................................................... 127
Request-Processing Pipeline ...................................................................................... 130
Windows System Resource Manager ......................................................................... 131
Common HTTP Issues ................................................................................................. 134
HTTP Redirects .................................................................................................................................. 135
HTTP Headers .................................................................................................................................... 136
Compression ............................................................................................................... 139
Enabling Compression ....................................................................................................................... 140
Setting Compression Options ............................................................................................................ 141
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Using web.config to Configure Compression ..................................................................................... 142
Caching Compressed Content ........................................................................................................... 143
Programmatically Enabling Compression .......................................................................................... 144
HTTP Keep-Alives ....................................................................................................... 144
Optimizing Your URLs ................................................................................................. 144
Virtual Directories .............................................................................................................................. 145
URL Rewriting .................................................................................................................................... 146
Managing Traffic ......................................................................................................... 150
Using robots.txt ................................................................................................................................. 150
Site Maps ........................................................................................................................................... 151
Bandwidth Throttling ......................................................................................................................... 152
Failed Request Tracing ............................................................................................... 154
Miscellaneous IIS Performance Tuning ...................................................................... 159
Summary .................................................................................................................... 159
■Chapter 5: ASP.NET Threads and Sessions ........................................................161
Threads Affect Scalability ........................................................................................... 161
ASP.NET Page Life Cycle ............................................................................................ 163
Application Thread Pool .............................................................................................. 165
Synchronous Page ............................................................................................................................. 165
Asynchronous Page ........................................................................................................................... 166
Load Test ........................................................................................................................................... 167
Improving the Scalability of Existing Synchronous Pages ................................................................. 170
Executing Multiple Async Tasks from a Single Page ......................................................................... 170
Handling Timeouts ............................................................................................................................. 172
Asynchronous Web Services ............................................................................................................. 173
Asynchronous File I/O ........................................................................................................................ 176
Asynchronous Web Requests ............................................................................................................ 178
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■ CONTENTS

Background Worker Threads ...................................................................................... 179
Background Thread for Logging ........................................................................................................ 181
Task Serialization .............................................................................................................................. 186
Locking Guidelines and Using ReaderWriterLock ....................................................... 186
Session State .............................................................................................................. 187
Session IDs ........................................................................................................................................ 188
InProc Mode ....................................................................................................................................... 189
Using StateServer .............................................................................................................................. 189
Using SQL Server ............................................................................................................................... 189
Selectively Enabling Session State and Using ReadOnly Mode ......................................................... 190
Scaling Session State Support .......................................................................................................... 191
Fine-Tuning ....................................................................................................................................... 197
Full-Custom Session State ................................................................................................................ 197
Session Serialization ......................................................................................................................... 198
Alternatives to Session State ...................................................................................... 199
Summary .................................................................................................................... 199
■Chapter 6: Using ASP.NET to Implement
and Manage Optimization Techniques .............................................201
Master Pages .............................................................................................................. 201
User Controls .............................................................................................................. 204
Example ............................................................................................................................................. 205
Registering and Using the Control ..................................................................................................... 207
Placing Controls in a DLL ................................................................................................................... 207
Themes ....................................................................................................................... 208
Static Files ......................................................................................................................................... 208
Skins .................................................................................................................................................. 208
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■CONTENTS

Setting Themes Dynamically ............................................................................................................. 208
Themable Properties ......................................................................................................................... 210
Example ............................................................................................................................................. 210
Precaching Themed Images .............................................................................................................. 211
Browser-Specific Code ............................................................................................... 212
Using Request.Browser ..................................................................................................................... 213
Browser-Specific Property Prefixes................................................................................................... 214
Caching Browser-Specific Pages ...................................................................................................... 215
Control Adapters ................................................................................................................................ 216
Browser Providers ............................................................................................................................. 218
Cloaking ............................................................................................................................................. 220
Dynamically Generating JavaScript and CSS ............................................................. 220
Example ............................................................................................................................................. 221
Accessing ASP.NET Controls from JavaScript ................................................................................... 222
Multiple Domains for Static Files ................................................................................ 223
Image Resizing ........................................................................................................... 224
Summary .................................................................................................................... 227
■Chapter 7: Managing ASP.NET Application Policies ..........................................229
Custom HttpModules .................................................................................................. 230
Requirements for the Example HttpModule ....................................................................................... 230
Init() Method ...................................................................................................................................... 231
PreRequestHandlerExecute Event Handler ........................................................................................ 232
BeginAuthenticateRequest Event Handler ......................................................................................... 233
EndAuthenticateRequest Event Handler ............................................................................................ 235
EndRequest Event Handler ................................................................................................................ 236
Database Table and Stored Procedure .............................................................................................. 237
Registering the HttpModule in web.config ........................................................................................ 238
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