ASP.Net Site Performance: Speeding up Database Access

SQL Server is a very large subject in itself. Rather than attempting to cover all aspects of SQL Server database access, this article focuses on those areas where you are likely to gain the biggest payoffs.

In this article by Matt Perdeck, author of ASP.NET Site Performance Secret, we will take a look at the following:

• Locking
• Execution plan reuse
• Fragmentation
• Memory
• Disk
• CPU

NHibernate 3.0: Working with the Data Access Layer

This article series by Jason Dentler, author of NHibernate 3.0 Cookbook, shows how to build a flexible, extensible data access layer based on NHibernate and its many query APIs. There are two styles of data access layer common in today's applications. The first recipe shows the beginnings of a typical data access object. The remaining recipes show how to set up a repository-based data access layer with NHibernate's various APIs.

In these articles we will cover the following topics:

• Transaction Auto-wrapping for the data access layer
• Setting up an NHibernate repository
• Using Named Queries in the data access layer
• Using ICriteria in the data access layer
• Using Paged Queries in the data access layer
• Using LINQ specifications in the data access layer

Of these the first two are dealt with in this article.

Using the Fluent NHibernate Persistence Tester and the Ghostbusters Test

Testing is a critical step in the development of any application. This article by Jason Dentler, author of NHibernate 3.0 Cookbook, introduces some techniques you can apply to quickly test your NHibernate applications. The recipes in this article are designed to ease the testing process and expose common issues.

In this article, we will cover the following topics:

• Using the Fluent NHibernate persistence tester
• Using the Ghostbusters test

Working with a Microsoft Windows Workflow Foundation 4.0 (WF) Program

WF4 is a process engine, as well as a visual program language, shipped along with Microsoft .NET Framework 4.0. Traditionally, when we design a long-running application, we break a large application into lots of small code blocks to address the business logic and use a database to store the intermediate data. With the growing complexity of logic, managing code blocks and authoring logic workflows becomes difficult. Now, with WF4, we can design and create distributed, long-running programs easily.

This article by Andrew Zhu, author of Microsoft Windows Workflow Foundation 4 cookbook, provides recipes that will help us understand basic information about WF4 programming like:

• Creating the first WF program: HelloWorkflow
• Creating a WF program with C# code
• Initializing a WF program with InArguments
• Creating a WF program with OutArgument
• Creating a WF Program with InOutArgument
• Using variable in WF program
• Running a WF program asynchronously
• Customizing a MyReadLine activity with bookmark
• Converting WF program instance to XAML
• Loading up a WF program from a XAML file