Intersoft WebGrid Documentation
How-to: Improve FlyPostBack performance
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Intersoft WebGrid > Miscellaneous WebGrid Settings > How-to: Improve FlyPostBack performance

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This topic will discuss the concept of FlyPostback architecture and how to improve its performance in Internet-zone web applications.

OnTheFly-Postback Introduction

Since introduced in WebCombo.NET V1.0 back in 2002, the FlyPostBack architecture developed by Intersoft Solutions have been significantly enhanced from time to time, until the release of WebUI.NET Framework 2.0.

Today we have seen the trend of AJAX or callback in ASP.NET 2.0, component vendors are now focusing to provide similar functionality to their products. Many of our customers have asked whether AJAX is something similar to our OnTheFly-Postback architecture, or is it something new. In this article, I'll try to explore some comparison of concepts and functionalities between our architecture and the others.

FlyPostback concepts and features

As you may have already know, AJAX is not a technology, it is an approach. It basically means that the approach used Asynchronous Javascript and XML to perform communications between client and server by using XmlHttp request which is supported by most modern browsers. So the whole idea is XmlHttp request. However, XmlHttp is not a new thing, it has been existed since 2001 when Microsoft introduced Internet Explorer 5.0. The point is, it is just getting attention and becomes popular recently as Gecko and Opera started to support it.

FlyPostback architecture is not just about using XmlHttp request to perform out-of-band callbacks to server and then obtain the response from server. FlyPostback is kind of framework or engine which built on the top of XmlHttp plus our own features implementation to bring a new standards for our ASP.NET components product line.

To clearly understand the concept of FlyPostback architecture, I've listed some of the unique features below which can't be accomplished by other similar XmlHttp-based approach:

Improving FlyPostback performance

Now, the interesting part of this article is how we can improve the performance of FlyPostback. By understanding the concepts and features above, we clearly understand that FlyPostback architecture posted quite a lot of data during the request. There is no significant performance issues when the application is running in intranet or extranet zone, however when utilized in public website -- and especially when end users used narrow-bandwith, it is noticable that the FlyPostback request is a bit slow in the response.

In WebUI.NET Framework 2.0, we have developed a few properties which developers can configure in order to turn off specific features of FlyPostback in case they did not utilize it in their applications. Many of our customers still have not aware of these capabilities and hopefully with this article, they would be able to set best configuration to use for their applications.

Following are the list of features which may be turned off to improve the response time of FlyPostback request. These settings can be found in FlyPostbackSettings object in control's instance:


By summary, if you do not access other controls' value or properties, here's the most recommended FlyPostBackSettings:

For WebCombo.NET 3.0:

For WebGrid.NET Enterprise 4.0:

With above configurations, you'll get a significant response time improvement of every FlyPostback requests by at least 60%. Thus, if previously it needs 3 seconds to load WebCombo during dropdown, you'll now get the results in 1 or 1.5 seconds. Again, note that the context of this article is using narrow-bandwith protocols such as dialup


Conclusion

As a proof of concept, we have also modified our live samples to use minimal features since they are not utilized in common basic scenarios. For WebCombo, please take a look and play with the "Basic" sample. For WebGrid, play with the "Hierarchical" sample. Then, compare with other samples. You'll be able to see significant response time improvement in both samples mentioned above.

As a final note, you would need to update to latest build for the framework and all products in order to take advantage of some of the new functionalities.

The Future

Our current FlyPostback architecture enables the options to provide richer functionalities, or to tradeoff between speed and functionalities. In the future, we would provide a new breakthrough in the server communication architecture, enabling both rich functionalities and speed to work in harmony.

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