Sharepoint Application Avoid Performance Mistakes

By Author: Denis Richard
Total Articles: 18
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A fast developing Microsoft platform, SharePoint, has come-up a long way from document management app to application development platform. SharePoint has also grown from utilizing ASP.NET to develop its own API and manage contents in SharePoint Content Database. Though many things have changed, for the good but some still needs attention. Some Companies have implemented their own solution based on SharePoint while others are still in waiting list.

SPList Items’ Iterating: Use this list from current SP context or create a SPList object to access a list identified by its name. It provides an Item’s property that returns a SPList Item collection object. The problem is Item’s property queries all items from content database for present SPList and does so every time the item’s property is accessed. This means that retrieved items are not cached. This problem of execution of same SQL statement and retrieving all items from content database can be solved but is unfortunately looked over.

Too-much Data request from Content database: When there is a request to access data from content database using the SPList ...
... object; then user ends-up in requesting all-items of the list. Developers usually go directly to SPList and work to retrieve list items resulting in excess data retrieved from Content Database. The best way to solve this problem is to use the SPQuery object and its features for limiting elements and columns.

SPSite and SPWeb Memory Leaks: The COM component is used for some of the core features of SharePoint. Though theoretically there is nothing wrong with COM, yet there is memory management of COM objects. SPSite and SPWeb are used to gain access to Content Management by the developers. Such objects need explicit disposal to release COM objects from memory when these are not needed. As SPSite and SPWeb are not disposed; so SharePoint installation runs into problem. The ASP.NET Worker Process leaks memory and the user ends-up in program being recycled by IIS in case the person runs out of memory. Recycling is related to losing current user session and paying a performance penalty for users who hit the worker process again after recycling is over.

The right approach is to monitor program for its memory usage and whether there is any memory-leak or not. Special memory profiler can be used to identify the leaking objects and what factor is leading to leakage. Special tool called “SPDisposeCheck” is used as a tool to detect SPSite and SPWeb leaking objects.

Denis Richard is a professional technical writer who has expertise in web application development, web applications, sharepoint application development.