Performance Testing Guidance for Web Applications

When developing all applications you came to that point in the project, usually near to shipping, when you think about looking at the performance of the app. Hopefully you have read the books and persuaded your stakeholder to give you some metrics to work by or you just want the app to run on the smallest amount of hardware possible allowing your customers to have little reason to not use your new widget.

The guys over at the patterns and practices team have a lot of information to help developers like us with information on how we can tune our apps and they have just released a new document on how to tune your web applications using performance testing. I have not read the whole document but from I have seen it is to the usual high standard and contains a wealth of information on the subject of performance for web applications, for those of you who also do Windows apps I am sure that you will be able to use some of the same methodologies in this area as well as the document gives you a strong grounding in the methodologies (I expect nothing less from these guys).

To read the document on line or download the PDF go here http://www.codeplex.com/PerfTestingGuide

Object Design Theory

For those of us who have not spent our lives immersed in Object design theory it can be quite confusing to find out there is a whole universe of techniques and design styles and acronyms when creating your code. Usually on closer inspections of the theories you normally find out that the latest pattern of design guidance is something you have always done the only difference is that you did not know what it was called, which is always reassuring however you do ten to feel overwhelmed until you find out this fact.

Sometimes when you listening to Object design theorists you also hear new techniques of design which you had always thought where no-no’s but now seem to be acceptable in the right place. For example I recently heard someone tell me that using public fields is acceptable when you never plan on doing anything special when the value is set or got, something I had burned people for doing!

The more I follow the path of investigating coding theory the more I am coming to the conclusions that there is no one rule which covers every situation, there is no all encompassing pattern of design its what ever fits the situation, which means we need to understand every situation and have a pattern or design style to fit it. However do not get me wrong there is never an excuse to write bad code.

On the topic of object and code design the guys at dnrTV have just finished a two part screen cast coving some of these techniques, they call it ‘Fundamentals of Agile Design’. Do not be put off by the agile design title as it’s a very informative discussion and presentation of how best to design your code for flexibility and future proofing, it also talks a lot about some of the design theories and acronyms. Have it on while you work, trust me there is not so much to watch but a lot to listen to.

To watch or download part 1 go here : http://www.dnrtv.com/default.aspx?showNum=73

To watch or download part 2 go here : http://www.dnrtv.com/default.aspx?showNum=74

Before you watch the video (if you download them) you will need the Techsmith Video Codec (160 K)

SQL Server Best Practices Analyser

Microsoft have just released the next version of their Best Practices tool for SQL Server 2005. This tool is a great help to anyone who has to administer a SQL Server as it will scan your SQL instances and any selected databases against a list of best practices settings.

Once the scan has completed you will be presented with a report, ranked by severity, detailing recommended changes and detailed information on where to get more information on the recommendation.

To download the tool go here : http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=da0531e4-e94c-4991-82fa-f0e3fbd05e63&displaylang=en&tm