SharePoint Performance Optimization Best Practices

Avoid site page customization if possible

SharePoint uses page ghosting technique to allow a server farm to scale out to tens of thousands of pages across all the sites within a farm. Page ghosting is valuable because it eliminates the need to transfer the contents of a page definition file from the SQL Server content database to the front-end web server. Page ghosting also makes it possible to process the default page instance for thousands of different sites by using a single page template that is compiled into an assembly DLL and loaded into memory in the IIS worker process just once per web application. This optimization technique is a key factor in the scalability of SharePoint in high-traffic environments running thousands or tens of thousands of sites.

SharePoint comes with different site templates and each template has some default pages templates. These page templates reside on file system of the front-end server. Page templates are used to provision page instances within the context of a site. When a page instance is initially provisioned from a page template, SharePoint doesn't need to store a copy of it in the content database because SharePoint can load the page template from the file system of the Web server and use it to process any request for an uncustomized page instance. Therefore, you can say that page ghosting describes the act of processing a request for an uncustomized page instance by using a page template loaded into memory from the file system of the front-end Web server.

Eliminate Extra Script Files

SharePoint 2010 comes up with rich and very interactive interface to perform different actions. More interactivity also introduces more scripts and code. In my recent SharePoint 2010 internet site project, we got into a situation where we want to eliminate extra scripts for anonymous users. After a little bit of research I found a great solution from Chris O’ Brien for extra script elimination. This solution works great in our scenario. I would recommend reading this great post and getting the benefit from this post.

Blob Caching

This cache can store image, sound, video files, and other large binary files on disk. Disk-based caching is one way in which you can achieve faster processing of content stored in content database. If SharePoint Web application contains large files such as images and multimedia files, enabling disk-based caching improves page delivery time because the cache stores files on the front-end Web server, thus reducing database traffic. Read more

Output Caching

SharePoint uses native ASP.NET caching technology to manage page content serving. It reduces database roundtrips, less CPU time, faster response, shorter latency, etc… SharePoint 2010 adds additional functionality over native ASP.NET output caching called “Cache Profiles”. By using "Cache Profiles" we can control cache behavior based on user’s access rights to a site.

Most of the time output caching is suitable for SharePoint internet sites with anonymous access. Because we might get inconsistent caching behavior. If we’ve more than one web-frontend into our farm. But we can overcome to these inconsistency behavior using SharePoint 2010 cache profiles.

Member Leaks

If you’re custom code for SharePoint applications then make sure you’ve run SPDisposeCheck. This tool may not show all memory leaks in your code. Further investigation is required if you continue to experience issues.

Unnecessary Index Columns

SharePoint index columns are similar to indexing columns in a database table. SharePoint maintains index columns itself instead of SQL Server. Index columns can substantially improve the performance of various query operations, such as queries that use the indexed column, join operations, and ordering operations such as sorting. On the other end, it may cause low performance too. SharePoint stores list items data in "AllUserData" table and for every index column it stores the same value in "NameValuePair" table too. Let’s say, if we’ve 100,000 rows in a list and 3 index columns. It means we’ll have 100,000 rows in "AllUserData" table and 300,000 rows in "NameValuePair" table. So we always try to avoid unnecessary index columns.

Improvements in SharePoint 2010 from the Business Perspective - Part 2

This is the second post in a series of blog posts on SharePoint 2010 improvements. If you've missed the first post, you could read it here

Audience Targeting

In SharePoint 2010 users can target Web Part content in two ways:

1. Configuration Web Parts Pages to display different Web Parts based on audience membership.
2. Configure Web Parts to display different content based on audience membership.

Document Management

SharePoint 2010 includes a broad collection of new capabilities that simplify and streamline how companies manage documents.

• Content Organizer

  Content Organizer is a rules-based classification engine that provides consistent classification of content based on Content Type and specific metadata properties. Site owners can create rules to drive content to specific document libraries and folders, where they inherit access control policy, default metadata values, and specific retention schedules.

• Document Sets

  Using Document Set users can bundle multiple documents that support a single case, project, contract, etc… under a unique entity. But the set can share metadata properties, and users can apply workflows and versioning to the Document Set as a whole. Each Document Set has a customizable welcome page that displays shared metadata properties.

• Document IDs

  SharePoint 2010 offers a new capability that assigns documents a unique identification number. Each document has a “permalink” based on its unique ID, which lets people retrieve the document regardless of where it is within a SharePoint deployment.

• Managed Metadata Service

  Managed Metadata Services in SharePoint 2010 which allows businesses to centrally manage metadata and share it anywhere in the farm.

Record Management - Store once, use many

SharePoint 2010 broadens the scope of records management by delivery core capabilities across the entire SharePoint platform. As a result, users can declare all content within SharePoint as records, and companies can manage a central records archive or support in-place records management.

Rich Media Management

SharePoint 2010 includes enhanced management and presentation of multimedia content including Asset Libraries and the Media Player Web Part.

Improved Web Analytics

SharePoint 2010 delivers improved Web Analytics, providing details reports on user activity, content inventory, and search use.

SharePoint Search

SharePoint Search capabilities are delivered through two server products:

• SharePoint Server 2010 – delivers out-of-the-box intranet and people search. SharePoint makes it easy to find content by combining relevance, refinement, mining, discovering (Manual or automatically generate list of colleagues mined from Microsoft Outlook) and social behavior in the search experience.
• FAST Search Server 2010 for SharePoint – offers a new choice in enterprise search. It delivers an exceptional intranet, people search, visual search experience and a platform for building custom, search-driven applications.

Improvements in SharePoint 2010 from the Business Perspective - Part 1

As a consultant, a lot of time one question is asked from us. What are the improvements in SharePoint 2010 from the Business Perspective? Also someone asked me the same question on a forum as well. So I decided to write a post on it. Here are some of the improvements in SharePoint 2010 from the Business perspective.

Ribbon User Interface

SharePoint 2010 features the Microsoft Office Fluent user interface, including the ribbon user interface. The SharePoint Ribbon user interface offers an extensible, seamless, and familiar user experience across client and server applications.

Easy Web Editing

Sites in SharePoint 2010 contain the same list and libraries as previous version of SharePoint, but the site is now a collection of pages. Because SharePoint sites focus more on pages than collections of lists, user can better control sites. User can also easily work together to change existing pages with wiki technology in SharePoint 2010 team site pages. To edit content on a page, user can simply click the Edit tab type on the page. To enhance content, people can embed Web Parts, media files, and SharePoint lists in the page with a single click.

Cross-Browser Support

SharePoint 2010 now supports not only Microsoft Internet Explorer, but also Firefox and Safari. With any of these browsers, user can view and edit sites, and work with content effectively with a high-quality experience.

Improved Mobile Experience

SharePoint 2010 now offers support for multiple micro-browsers, helping more users to work together while using mobile devices. Users can view and edit Office documents, browse SharePoint document libraries, and search for content and people.

Stay Connected (receive alerts on you cell phone)

SharePoint 2010 list and libraries now allow you to receive text messages to your phone when you subscribe to an alert.

Work Online or Offline

SharePoint Workspace 2010 is the rich desktop client for SharePoint 2010 that helps users to work together, even when they’re not connected to a network. When users work offline, SharePoint Workspace caches any changes and automatically synchronizes the changes when connected to SharePoint site. In SharePoint Workspace 2010, people can take offline the content of entire sites, including custom lists and line-of-business data, and can integrate Microsoft InfoPath 2010 forms for richer data entry and data validation.

Enhanced Search Experience

SharePoint 2010 provides thumbnail Previews, Search results Refinement such as "Did You Mean" and improved relevance.

Office Web Applications

SharePoint 2010 works with the web companions to the most popular Office applications, so users can access documents, spreadsheets, presentations and notes without worrying about whether the computer they use has the latest Office programs installed.

Multilingual User Interface

SharePoint 2010 makes it easier for those organizations that have employees across borders and speak different native languages. After site administrators install the required language packs and activate the Multilingual User Interface (MUI) service, users can switch between languages and have their sites in the language they’ve chosen. When users create new content, they can also submit translations of the content so other users can view the content in specified languages.