Ultra-Fast ASP.NET: Build Ultra-Fast and Ultra-Scalable web sites using ASP.NET and SQL Server [Paperback]

Richard Kiessig (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 10, 2009 | ISBN-10: 1430223839 | ISBN-13: 978-1430223832 | Edition: 1

Ultra-fast ASP.NET provides a practical guide to building extremely fast and scalable websites using ASP.NET and SQL Server. Written by a highly-experienced consultant it provides straight-forward guidance for achieving performance increases through clearly delimited alterations to website’s design and coding. The book deals with all aspects of website performance from client computer to the website code to the supporting IIS and SQL Servers that underpin it. This gives readers all the information that they need in a single volume.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Rick Kiessig has been doing software design and development for more than 30 years. He is currently an independent software consultant who focuses on architecting and building large-scale websites using .NET and SQL Server. His clients have included companies such as Microsoft, MySpace, Shop.com and the Hong Kong Jockey Club. Before that, he worked at Microsoft for four years, first as an architect and developer in MSN, and later at the Microsoft Technology Center (MTC). His experience at the MTC included leading weekly two to three day long Architectural Design Sessions with some of Microsoft's largest customers, to help them design and improve the architectures of their websites and other software. Before coming to Microsoft, Rick worked as an independent consultant in Silicon Valley for 20+ years. Projects included designing and building a large-scale Java-based Content Management System and architecting systems to deliver web content to millions of Interactive TV subscribers. He has also developed mission-critical real-time software for spacecraft that have flown to Mars several times, to the Moon and to a nearby comet. Rick has been an Internet user and developer since 1974. He moved from California to New Zealand in 2006, where he now resides.

Product Details

• Paperback: 496 pages
• Publisher: Apress; 1 edition (November 10, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1430223839
• ISBN-13: 978-1430223832
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 7.5 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.5 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (10 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #19,894 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #10 in Books > Computers & Technology > Microsoft > Development > SQL Server
  • #25 in Books > Computers & Technology > Microsoft > Development > C & C++ Windows Programming
  • #49 in Books > Computers & Technology > Web Development > Programming

More About the Author

I first started working with the Internet (actually, the ARPAnet, as it was known back then) as part of a work/study program at NASA Ames Research Center while I was in school in 1974. That was back in the days when 56Kbps was considered a "high speed" trunk and a 44MB disk was the size of a washing machine.

After working at Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) during the summer doing tech support, I went to university at UC Santa Barbara. They turned out to be one of the early adopters of Unix.

After graduating from UCSB with a BA in Math in 1979, I got a job working with Unix, C, and the Internet.

During the 1980s, I moved to Silicon Valley and started my own software consulting company. I specialized in low-level operating systems work, performance tuning, and network-oriented applications. I led a team that did one of the first ports of Unix to a microprocessor (the 68000) and wrote a Unix-like OS from scratch, including a high-performance filesystem. I developed an XNS-based network stack and helped architect Intel's first port of Unix to the x86. I also wrote several 3-D scientific animation systems and a gate array placement package based on the simulated annealing optimization algorithm.

In the early 1990s, I wrote a custom real-time OS that was used in the US Navy's F-18 aircraft. I developed real-time applications that were used in spacecraft and associated ground support systems, including a system called the Stellar Compass that measures vehicle attitude using digital images of stars. That software has flown to the Moon, to Mars three times, and to a comet and back. I was also the principal architect and designer of the ground system and various flight software components for one of the world's first commercial imaging satellites for what is now DigitalGlobe (of Google Maps fame).

I was very enthusiastic about Java when I first heard about it in the mid-1990s. One of the first things I developed with it was a large-scale audio conferencing system. Sometime later, I used it to build a custom high-performance application server. I helped to architect and build several large-scale Java-based data-intensive web sites and web applications, including one that was designed to be deployed to and used by 20 million set-top boxes to provide Internet over TV. My most recent Java-based project was building a document-management-oriented filesystem; I am the primary inventor of several related patents. A number of financial institutions are now using the system to help address risk-management issues.

I went to work for Microsoft in late 1999. My first project there was to develop a comprehensive architecture to deliver MSN content via TV-oriented middleware platforms such as WebTV using C#, ASP.NET, and SQL Server. A few years later, after completing development of the initial system, I moved to the Microsoft Technology Center. I began working with and advising some of Microsoft's largest customers such as eBay and MySpace, regarding the .NET- and SQL Server-oriented aspects of their system architectures.

The common thread that binds my career together includes a focus on performance and reliability. The software development process is another long-time interest of mine, because I've seen first-hand how much of an impact it can have on the success or failure of a project.

In December 2006, my family and I left the intensity of Silicon Valley and moved to beautiful New Zealand, where we currently live. My hobbies include ham radio (callsign ZL2HAM) and photography.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

22 of 22 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Seeing the big picture: best practices + tips & tricks, November 6, 2009

By 

decimal "theColdest" (San Francisco, CA USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Ultra-Fast ASP.NET: Build Ultra-Fast and Ultra-Scalable web sites using ASP.NET and SQL Server (Paperback)

One of the author's stated goals for this book is "to help remove some of the fog that may be masking the end-to-end vision of the technology and to help you see the beauty and the full potential of ASP.NET and SQL Server." He does an excellent job of doing just that.

We all want our web applications to run lean, clean and fast, but how do we best spend our time doing so? You might ask, "Should I spend more time improving my caching strategies? How should I approach it?" or "Should I spend my time trying to optimize IIS's performance? Where do I begin with that?"

With so many different ways to approach any given problem, you could spend days or weeks learning all the different ways you MIGHT be able to get your desired results. But if you're like me, after a while you just say, "OK, OK, someone please just tell me the best way to approach this for most situations and I'll tweak it for my needs." That's what you get here.

This book is great. It is a collection of best practices, tips and tricks for architecting your web applications to be both ultra-fast AND ultra-scalable. Instead of listing a thousand things you might want to try out to see if it helps, this book just says, "here is a proven approach that works for most situations, most of the time". Thank you! Let's implement it and move on to the next one.

But more than just telling you, "Do this, then do that", this book explains the Why's as you go along. This is invaluable as it is how we actually learn and integrate these things into our understanding of the big picture.

It is clear that the author has deep and intimate knowledge of the subject. His credentials explain why. He began working with the Internet and writing network-oriented software in the 70's. More recently, he was an architect at the Microsoft Technology Center (MTC) in Silicon Valley where he ran two- to three-day architectural design sessions once or twice each week for some of Microsoft's largest and most sophisticated customers. In understanding their issues and helping them architect solutions he saw many of the same questions coming up time and time again. Questions such as:

* "How can we make our HTML display faster?" (Chapter 2)
* "What's the best way to do caching?" (Chapter 3)
* "How can we use IIS to make our 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 database slow?" (Chapters 8 and 9)
* "How can we optimize our infrastructure and operations?" (Chapter 10)
* "Where do we start?" (Chapter 11)

I'm thrilled someone has finally written a book like this. It really helps a developer learn and understand the end-to-end big picture... not only the How's but, more importantly, the Why's.

Kudos Mr. Kiessig.

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Must-Have Book for any ASP.NET Developer, November 30, 2009

By 

Frank Stepanski (PA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Ultra-Fast ASP.NET: Build Ultra-Fast and Ultra-Scalable web sites using ASP.NET and SQL Server (Paperback)

I have been programming in ASP.NET for a few years now but still have lots to learn in my opinion. I know how to create fairly robust ASP.NET websites with AJAX, membership roles, with a few data business objects and so forth. But one thing I had very little knowledge of was how to make my ASP.NET more efficient and run faster.

I love ASP.NET, C# And the whole .NET framwork, but I must admit it can be a little slow compared to other technologies and many of the newer AJAX controls have lots of overhead to deal with. Of course with with 'magic' of AJAX, these ASP.NET controls can make a website feel like a windows desktop application but it does have its vices which id overhead of the viewstate among others.

This is the first and only book that I have found that really focuses only on how to make your ASP.NET web pages, more efficient and load and run faster. There are a few other books for general website performance (i.e. Even Faster Websites by Steve Souders) but that is for general topics like CSS and JavaScript, not ASP.NET specific.

Here are some of the many topics you will learn from this book:

*A way of thinking about performance issues that will help you obtain real results.
*How to apply key principles that will help you build ultra-fast and ultra-scalable web sites.
*How to use the ultra-fast approach to be fast in multiple dimensions. You'll have not only fast pages but also fast changes, fast fixes, fast deployments and more.
*Techniques that are being used by some of the world's largest web sites.
*How to structure your HTML and CSS to create pages that load ultra-fast.
*Tips for using Silverlight, Ajax and IIS 7 to improve the performance of your site.
*How to use comprehensive caching at all tiers to deliver content faster.
*Why you should avoid traditional session state and how to make the best use of cookies.
*Tips and tricks for optimizing your ASP.NET and SQL Server code for performance and scalability.
*How to use Analysis Services to offload your relational database.
*Why many sites that serve individual pages quickly are not scalable.
*How to avoid common pitfalls that can have an adverse impact on your site's performance, both now and as it grows.
*How to apply an end-to-end systems-based approach to web site performance and scalability, which includes everything from the browser and the network to caching, back-end operations, hardware infrastructure, and your software development process.


This book is a must for any ASP.NET for any ASP.NET developer, whether you are a beginner or advanced. Actually it is even better if you are a beginner/intermediate because you can take the techniques and tips taught in this book as you learn ASP.NET instead of going back to previously built ASP.NET websites if you are and advanced user.

Either way, get this book, you will not regret it!

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Simply Brilliant - Finally an Excellent ASP.NET Performance and Scalability Text, December 2, 2009

By 

Mr. Bookish, Mild and Meek "JoePee" (London UK) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Ultra-Fast ASP.NET: Build Ultra-Fast and Ultra-Scalable web sites using ASP.NET and SQL Server (Paperback)

This book is simply brilliant, and checking the credentials of the author, a distinguished veteran engineering manager and software architect, one is not suprised in the least. It is one of those special books that pop up now and then - of the kind that would be written by .NET experts such as Juval Lowy or Jeffery Ritcher and a combination of an architectural guru such as Chris Loosley who wrote the now dated but probably best distributed software performance/scalability text ever written High-Performance Client/Server or say Martin Fowler who wrote one of the two quintessential patterns-based software architecture texts, Patterns of Enterprise Application Architecture.

The MS Press Improving .NET Application Performance and Scalability (Patterns & Practices) is similar in spirit and content to Ultra-Fast ASP.NET, but though still useful, it is quite dated (published 2004, that is before .NET 2.0/ASP.NET 2.0) and also much broader in scope and a bigger tome. In contrast, Ultra Fast targets ASP.NET and is very up-to-date, very readable and practical. By limiting the scope to ASP.NET and MS platforms he was able to comfortably and expertly cover all tiers, from the web front-end through the web/app tier to the data and infrastructure layers. Similar books exist for the LAMP platform (e.g, Building Scalable Web Sites: Building, Scaling, and Optimizing the Next Generation of Web Applications and High Performance Web Sites: Essential Knowledge for Front-End Engineers) but this is the only up-to-date such book for ASP.NET and I highly recommend it, as other reviewers have rightly said, for not just the advanced but beginner and intermediate ASP.NET developers, architects and development project managers. I would however, suggest that one gets this book along with what appears to be the quintessential, modern software architecture text - due to its sheer quality and applicability combined with concise coverage of just about all dimensions and viewpoints of contemporary real life software architecture, Software Systems Architecture: Working With Stakeholders Using Viewpoints and Perspectives. Splendid stuff!

I think I may not be alone in believing that a similar text is much needed that would cover the Win-forms/Desktop client application space mirroring the current text. Such a text would delve into the performance scaling considerations of Threading/New Parallel features for multi-processors; WCF/Asmx Web Services, REST/SOAP, ADO.NET/EF/LINQ-PLINQ/other ORMs such as NHibernate, etc. and be structured similarly to Mr. Kiessig's current text. Hope Mr. Kiessig will accept the honor!