Performance and Scalability

Performance and Scalability in asp.net 2.0

One of the goals for ASP.NET 2.0 set by the Microsoft team was to provide the world’s fastest Web appli-

cation server. This book also addresses a number of performance enhancements available in ASP.NET 2.0.

One of the most exciting performance enhancements is the new caching capability aimed at exploiting

Microsoft’s SQL Server. ASP.NET 2.0 now includes a feature called SQL cache invalidation. Before

ASP.NET 2.0, it was possible to cache the results that came from SQL Server and to update the cache

based on a time interval—for example, every 15 seconds or so. This meant that the end user might see

stale data if the result set changed sometime during that 15-second period.

In some cases, this time interval result set is unacceptable. In an ideal situation, the result set stored

in the cache is destroyed if any underlying change occurs in the source from which the result set is

retrieved—in this case, SQL Server. With ASP.NET 2.0, you can make this happen with the use of SQL

cache invalidation. This means that when the result set from SQL Server changes, the output cache is

triggered to change, and the end user always sees the latest result set. The data presented is never stale.

Another big area of change in ASP.NET is in the area of performance and scalability. ASP.NET 2.0 now

provides 64-bit support. This means that you can now run your ASP.NET applications on 64-bit Intel or

AMD processors.

Because ASP.NET 2.0 is fully backward compatible with ASP.NET 1.0 and 1.1, you can now take any former ASP.NET application, recompile the application on the .NET Framework 2.0, and run it on a 64-bit

processor.