In this chapter, we tackled the issue of web application performance, with particular attention given to configuring Rails and using Ajax to help provide immediate feedback to the user. The strategies we explored:
Optimizing sessions
Either by using faster session storage mechanism or disabling sessions altogether
Caching output
Reducing or eliminating the time that Rails spends rendering each request
Merging and minimizing assets
Reducing the overhead involved in transferring JavaScript and CSS files so common in Ajax-heavy applications
Detaching long-running tasks
Using Ajax to update the user to the task progress