When I use the "Publish Web Site" utility in VS2005, the page appears to still need one visit to compile. I was under the impression that when you publish a page it gets compiled, so there is no need to visit the page once. I am referring to the MSDN info on deploying a website:

From the article:
http://msdn2.microsoft.com/library/5c12ykae.aspx

Choosing the Publish Web Utility

Advantages of using Publish Web utility:
...
* Because the pages in the site are already compiled, they do not need to be dynamically compiled when first requested. This can reduce the initial response time for a page. (When pages are dynamically compiled, the output is cached for subsequent requests.)

I am running on my local Windows XP IIS website, my development is taking place on one site (for example http://localhost/developsite/) and I publish it to another site (like http://localhost/publishsite). When I look at the aspx files in wwwroot\publishsite they all have the "This is a marker file generated by the precompilation tool, and should not be deleted!" line in them and my /bin directory has all the dll's and webpage.aspx.1234.compiled pages in it, so I know that the site is "compiled". However, when I first visit the page there is a delay similar to when I hit the "run" button on my development site. Successive page visits are almost instantaneous.

What am I missing?

You might simply be experiencing the load time of the ASP.NET worker process (aspnet_wp.exe or w3wp.exe). Also there's a delay in loading the AppDomain in the worker process. Also, there's JIT compilation going on by the CLR. Did you build the code as debug or release? If it's debug, then it's going to run slower.

So, there are many startup activities that are hard or impossible to completely eliminate.

-Brock

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DevelopMentor
http://staff.develop.com/ballen

Thanks for your help.

The aspnet_wp.exe process is already running, so I think I can rule that out. I guess I was under the impression that the JIT compiling was taken care of in the compilation/publishing process. It seems I was mistaken. Is there a resource that someone can point me to (perhaps on msdn?) that would explain the compile / JIT process in detail?

Where do I configure to build the code as release? I haven't changed any build options from the default VS2005 install (that I am aware of) and I can't seem find the build options. I am using the Web Development Settings of VS2005 BTW. The only thing I can think of is the Configuration Manager which has an active solution configuration of "Debug", but the dropdowns don't give me a "Release" option (like in VS2003). Is this because there is no "Go live" option for ASP.NET 2.0 so Microsoft has disabled the release functionality?

Once again, thanks for your quick reply and your help.

You can build a 'Release' version by chosing the "Solution Configurations" dropdown list you alreay mentioned. Whatever option is selected here is used when you "Publish the Website".

As for the JITer, it's a fact of life in .NET, and it usually doesn't slow things down such that it's noticable. I mentioned just to let you know that there are lots of other things going on.

One last point to consider -- this is still beta software. They are still working on features and bugs. Performance tuning doesn't come until later.

It's interesting that the startup time of a the website has been such a huge topic for debate. That initial lag has never been a issue for any sites I've worked on. How often do you drop in a whole new build of your website? Really how much of a problem is that first lag time? I don't ask to be antagonistic, so I really am curious if this lag is just unacceptable for your application's requirements.

-Brock

---

DevelopMentor
http://staff.develop.com/ballen

My install of VS2005 does not have the "Release" option in the Solution Configuration (like in VS2003).

No offence taken. I understand that this is a beta product - I am not so much concerned that it takes a long time (the lag time for my app is about 15 seconds - from page submit to the first line on page load in the successive page). It's that I was wondering what exactly was difference between publishing the site and not publishing the site (besides the hiding of your source). The documentation seems to indicate that the site is compiled so there is minimal response time (I am referring to this line in the documentation:
"Because the pages in the site are already compiled, they do not need to be dynamically compiled when first requested. This can reduce the initial response time for a page. (When pages are dynamically compiled, the output is cached for subsequent requests.)"

In my application the wait time is virtually the same 15 seconds for both the "normal" site and the "published" site (2 different sites on my machine) indicating to me that there is no pre-compilation taking place. I was assuming that I was misunderstanding what was exactly happening "behind the scenes" and wanted to better understand why this was happening.

Thank you for your help anyway - it cleared a few things up.

My install of VS2005 does not have the "Release" option in the Solution Configuration (like in VS2003).

Hmm... Odd. My version (VS.NET 2005 [Nov 2004 CTP]) has a menu in the toolbar, but the option is also accessible via the Build Menu -> Configuration Manager -> Configuration DropDown List. I am not sure why it's inaccessible for you.

Because the pages in the site are already compiled, they do not need to be dynamically compiled when first requested. This can reduce the initial response time for a page. (When pages are dynamically compiled, the output is cached for subsequent requests.)

This is referring to the parsing of ASPX and ASCX files and turning them into classes upon first request. That's what the "Publish Website" option does so that step is performed prior to deployment presumably on a build machine and not on the live webserver. All of the other 'normal' activity still needs to occur (like I mentioned earlier) on the webserver.

I must admit though, a 15 second startup time is really slow. Is there anything out of the ordinary occurring in Application_Start, Session_Start or in any of the HttpApplication's pre-processing events? Just a thought...

-Brock

---

DevelopMentor
http://staff.develop.com/ballen

I must admit though, a 15 second startup time is really slow. Is there anything out of the ordinary occurring in Application_Start, Session_Start or in any of the HttpApplication's pre-processing events? Just a thought...

I just wanted to reply and address this for you and everyone else reading this. I haven't written any code in any of those events, so I wouldn't imagine that is the case. I will just have to track down where this delay is coming from (now that it sounds like you believe that is a slow startup time). I am just learning this stuff as I go, so I will probably figure out what exactly is happening.

Once again, thanks for your help.

-- chad