I converted my Web Site Project to a WAP project and am very impressed my compile times went from about 15 minutes (yes, 15 minutes) to under 1 minute.  The only question I have is how can I optimize the startup of the app after a compile, it is taking 2 minutes to start.  I know that it will take some time because everything is in one assembly again, but I can't remember it taking this long in VS 2003.

Are there some settings that I can tweak or anything?

Thanks for the help,

Greg

Hi Greg,

Both of those timings seem a bit off.  Can you provide more details as to what your application is doing during startup?  Do you have any app initialization code that is running (for example: something within application_start)?  How big is the application itself?

Thanks,

Scott

Hi Scott,

Thanks for replying.

The application is quite large, ~700 pages.  On startup we are caching user data/permissions from the database in the Session_Start event, but it takes a while even to get to the point of calling this code.

The size of the application is one of the reasons we migrated to WAP projects, we were actually advised by Microsoft support to take a look at it.

Greg

Hi Greg,

How long did it take to compile the application with VS 2003?  Even taking 1 minute for 700 pages seems longer than it should.  Do you have custom build actions or other pre/post build steps in the solution that are doing custom things?

To test startup beter, what I'd recomend doing is adding a "hello world" page to the application that simply outputs "hello world", and then set that as the start page for the project. Then try running the project again and seeing how long it takes to load.  If it takes roughly the same amount of time to load, then my guess is that the delay is caused by one of the following things:

1) Code within your Global.asax that is computing/caching things that is taking longer

2) Code within an <httpmodule> that is computing/caching things that is taking longer

Can you check to see whether you have any custom httpModules installed wtihin your web.config file?  And can you check to see whether you have an Application_Start event within your Global.asax file?

One idea would then be to turn off sessionstate for the "hello world" page (enablesessionstate="false"), and then re-test the scenario.  This will let you isolate whether the delay is due to your Session_Start event code.

If you can get this data for us, we can help some more.

Thanks,

Scott

Scott,

I can't remember exactly how long it took in 2003, but I think it was maybe a little longer than what we are seeing now.

There aren't any custom actions or anything.

I created the Hello, World page and it was about the same startup time bith with session state on or off.

We have the following httphandlers in our web.config:

We are using the "FreeTextBox" product as well as the new ASP.NET Report Viewer control.

When I start in debug mode it takes most of the two minutes or so to hit my break point in the global asax and the a few seconds to run that code and then the app will launch.  I saved the text in the output window before it hit the code in global.asax but I didn't want to add it here as it is quite large.

Let me know what you think,

Thanks for your help on this.

Greg

Hi Greg,

Can you send me email (scottgu@microsoft.com) with the output window details as well as the web.config file for your application, and I will loop you in with someone who can work with you directly to investigate.  The behavior you are describing is ceretainly odd and shouldn't be happening. We'll be able to figure out what it is and help you get it resolved.

Thanks,

Scott