Chapter 6: Analyzing and Performance Tuning the Web Tier

Chapter 6

Analyzing and Performance Tuning the Web Tier

We use the term Web tier to refer to the front-end Web server used to satisfy HTTP requests from remote browser clients, such as Internet Explorer. Many different Web servers are available for various platforms. Microsoft s implementation of a Web server is called Internet Information Server (IIS), and it is essentially a file and application server for Internet and private Intranet Web sites or applications. IIS is a very powerful Web server capable of hosting both static and dynamic content. Static content typically consists of images or simple text files created using HTML that rarely change. To the end user, dynamic content may appear to be static because the request that generated server-side scripting activity is executed on the server, and only the response is returned to the client. Dynamic content usually provides a far richer user experience than static content. Dynamic content can be highly customizable for each request. It is usually generated by some additional component or scripting language, which is processed by the Web server originating from a remote request. The types of dynamic applications discussed in this chapter are ASP.NET or traditional ASP Web applications. This chapter refers to the sample storefront IBuySpy ASP.NET Web application coded in the VB.NET language.