Performance Optimization

65 min

ASP.NET Core provides many features for optimizing application performance, enabling high-throughput, low-latency applications. Performance optimization includes caching, compression, async operations, query optimization, and profiling. Understanding performance optimization enables scalable applications. Performance is critical for user experience and cost efficiency.

Caching, compression, and response caching can significantly improve performance by reducing server load and response times. Caching stores frequently accessed data in memory. Compression reduces response sizes. Response caching stores HTTP responses. Understanding caching enables efficient resource usage. Caching is essential for high-performance applications.

Profiling tools help identify bottlenecks in your application by measuring execution time, memory usage, and database queries. Profilers like Application Insights, dotMemory, and PerfView identify performance issues. Understanding profiling enables data-driven optimization. Profiling should guide optimization efforts.

Async/await enables non-blocking I/O operations, allowing applications to handle more concurrent requests. Async operations don't block threads, enabling better resource utilization. Understanding async/await enables scalable applications. Async is essential for I/O-bound operations.

Database query optimization includes using appropriate indexes, avoiding N+1 queries, using eager loading, and optimizing LINQ queries. Slow database queries are common bottlenecks. Understanding query optimization enables efficient data access. Database optimization significantly impacts performance.

Best practices include using async for I/O operations, implementing caching appropriately, optimizing database queries, using compression, profiling before optimizing, and monitoring performance in production. Understanding performance optimization enables scalable applications. Performance optimization is an ongoing process.

Key Concepts

ASP.NET Core provides many performance optimization features.
Caching, compression, and response caching improve performance.
Profiling tools identify bottlenecks.
Async/await enables non-blocking I/O operations.
Database query optimization is essential for performance.

Learning Objectives

Master

Implementing caching strategies
Using compression and response caching
Profiling applications to identify bottlenecks
Optimizing database queries and async operations

Develop

Performance optimization thinking
Understanding scalability principles
Designing high-performance applications

Tips

Use async/await for all I/O operations.
Implement caching for frequently accessed data.
Profile before optimizing—measure, don't guess.
Optimize database queries—they're often bottlenecks.

Common Pitfalls

Not using async, blocking threads unnecessarily.
Not implementing caching, causing repeated expensive operations.
Optimizing without profiling, wasting time on non-bottlenecks.
Not optimizing database queries, causing slow responses.

Summary

ASP.NET Core provides many performance optimization features.
Caching, compression, and async operations improve performance.
Profiling guides optimization efforts.
Understanding performance optimization enables scalable applications.
Performance optimization is essential for production applications.

Exercise

Implement response caching and compression in your application.

// Program.cs
builder.Services.AddResponseCompression();
builder.Services.AddResponseCaching();

app.UseResponseCompression();
app.UseResponseCaching();

// Controller
[ResponseCache(Duration = 300)]
public class CachedController : Controller
{
    [ResponseCache(Duration = 60)]
    public IActionResult Index()
    {
        return Content($"Cached response generated at: {DateTime.Now}");
    }
}

Performance Optimization