Performance with WSS 3.0 API calls

In the end, what you want to deliver to your client is a powerhouse of a portal. It should contain all these fantastic features and integrations, and still respond within a second right?

So, of course we cache all integrations where possible, that's an obvious performance tweak. But did you know that you'll most likely will have to cache many of your MOSS read API calls as well? Not as obvious to me, but when I started profiling my portal... Well, a couple of hours work and the portal morphed from turtle to viper. :-)

To name an example, if your portal is somewhat complex, I'm guessing you'll have added a settings list that you access through the WSS API. (You of course do not want it in your web.config since that is hard both to deploy and to administer.)

In my case, these settings were accessed over a hundred times in one request (yes, a lot, but it's one complicated first page, I'll tell you...). Now, this actually took seconds to process on my virtual environment. A simple cache layer that sets all those calls to zero ms - and yeehaa - response times worth talking about.

Bottom line - don't trust SharePoint to help you out with performance!