During the last event in Kaunas University of Technology, I was giving the presentation about the new things that are available in ASP.Net 2.0. Specifically, I have covered the personalization and membership topics. Because I had only 40 minutes for the presentation and questions, so I had to run through the slides very quickly. What I have decided, is to spend more time on demos, with a common goal to create a personalizable web site.

One of the sentences I liked during the introduction done by Microsofties was: “The power of the product depends on the knowledge of the user. Many people claim, that Microsoft products are bad, but in many cases this is caused by the limited knowledge of the product.”. This sentence can be applied to the developers as well - many problems are related to missing knowledge in some areas (this I have experienced by myself).

I would like to put some questions I had after the presentation and, of course, answers to them. I think there was some more questions, so if I will remmember any or You will post some, I’ll try to add them here.

Q: What Microsoft is doing to make ASP.Net faster

A: Well, there are a lot of things. First based on new version of .Net framework with many new features that can help improve performance. One of that kind are Generics. Other things like per page compilation (not all site is compiled, but each page, when visited), which results in shorter time for page opening, precompilation tool, and so on.

Of course there is a lot of ways You can improve performance of Your applications by applying the right technology at the right time. You, as the developers must decide when to use datasets, when to use readers, what to cache and what not to cache.

I had example just by myself, when after just few adjustments site performance was increased 40 times (Incredible ).

Q: Do I need to create a database myself when using standard SqlProvider for profiles and personalization?

The simple answer is no. What is needed to do, is just to run aspnet_regsql.exe, which is located in the .Net 2.0 framework directory. Usually it is something like %systemroot%Microsoft.NetFrameworkv2.0.xxxx.