Quick wins on performance in your web applications

According site requirements and business needs, your web application has to reach sometimes a higher level of reactivity. Most of the business applications does not encounter this situation because the main focus is set to business rules and engines(data manipulations and processes) and not really about interfaces and network… However, it’s an other deal with public and mobile web sites.
There are already many sites which propose some tips on site optimizations, but I’ll focus on ASP.NET Applications and my own feedbacks. Following some simples tips to gain performances in few changes…

Floodlight on Silverlight Architectures !

I have started to learn and practice Silverlight 2.0/3.0 since many months and I must admit that it was not a simple task. Coming from a long experience in ASP.NET development, it was a change to use client-server solutions and a great pleasure to discover others syntaxes(WPF) and architectures… but when it comes to find an architecture for Silverlight and the only thing that you have is silverlight.net(a great site with good information but, in my personal opinion, lack of synthesis), you can be lost through informations. That’s the point I want to highlight in this topic : provide a quick architecture/pattern guide to everyone who want to start a Silverlight application.

Linq To SQL : LinqContext per Unit of Work

To implement a Linq To SQL Oriented solution, there are many ways to construct your application. But only one interested me : the Context per Unit of Work Architecture.

When using Linq To SQL, you need to instanciate a Context which contains your entities tables and allow you to apply query methods. But when your application is construct with many layers, you only can pass Context through methods to keep the same context during your business operations. It is the same problem when a transaction is required(managed by Linq To SQL Context though optimistic transaction).

Linq To Entity/Entity Framework with SP1

When the Linq word begin to spread to the developper’s world, I immediatly inform me about what is it and what can I do with “that”. After trying Linq To Object, Linq To XML, Linq To SQL and Linq To Entity, I was convinced that it was the right path to follow. But for Data management, I was preferring Linq To SQL because Linq To Entity utilisation was boring(Stored Procedure to write).
After SP1, Linq To Entity was not the same. So I studied it more deeper… And some good things falls.

Linq To SQL Generic Controller

With the power of Linq language, it’s easy to use Linq To SQL to build 95% of the data access interrogation.

But you will notify that 2/3 of your data access methods is always the same, as GetById, GetAll, Insert, DeleteById…

So Microsoft staff has written a class named GenericController that allow you to centralize all standard methods in one class. You only need to inherit from it and a good part of your job is done.

http://code.msdn.microsoft.com/multitierlinqtosql

If you look more deeper in this pack, you will find some other classes written to instanciate one LinqContext by Query or a Linq To SQL Debugger(see also my ticket on DebugWriter).

Linq Overview

During my migration from .NET 2.0 to .NET 3.0/3.5, my first tought was : ‘With .NET 3.5, I can used Linq To SQL and stop to bore me with all the code generation tools”. I don’t want to crush the glory of tools like Raptier or Code Smith, but an ORM produce by Microsoft can be better in generation time(class generation and integration) and simplicity. It was true(for common uses). But better than that. Linq offers many others functionalities(strongly typed, composite queries, relashionship between objects and many more). And I began to forget all about others problems when the Graal was not here…

After a month of research, I have started to write a document on my Linq feedback and I share it today 🙂

linq