Designing browser-enabled forms for performance in InfoPath Forms Services (Part 6)
Part 6 – Addendum: Links to related performance resources
Welcome to the sixth article in our series about designing InfoPath browser-enabled forms for better performance and scalability. In our previous articles we defined performance in terms of responsiveness, listed a number of conditions that cause postbacks, and looked at some of conditions that make postbacks more expensive, reducing the responsiveness and scalability of a form system. We also described some of the issues that affect form-rendering performance in the browser and suggested using the Design Checker to monitor browser compatibility issues while designing a form template in the InfoPath Designer. Finally, we listed some useful performance monitoring counters available in PerfMon.
In this addendum, we list a variety of links to additional resources you might want investigate if you are interested learning more about designing forms with InfoPath 2007. In keeping with our theme, the emphasis is on performance, but you will also find other related resources that you can use to broaden your understanding of the online forms environment. Since InfoPath is built on SharePoint technologies, the following resources provide information not only on InfoPath Forms Services and browser-enabled forms, but also SharePoint, ASP.NET, and SQL Server. In addition, we’ve included some general resources on monitoring and testing, and thrown in a few good blogs as well.
Hope you’ve found this series helpful in demystifying InfoPath browser-enabled forms performance. Be sure to let the InfoPath team know if you have comments or questions about your own forms requirements by adding comments here or on the InfoPath newsgroup listed below!
Thanks,
Brad Valantine
Technical Writer
InfoPath
Improving the Performance of InfoPath 2007 Forms
http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb380251.aspx
A whitepaper about performance and the InfoPath rich client. Because of differences between the client and browser-enabled forms, not everything applies to Forms Services and browser forms, but a must read nonetheless.
InfoPath Forms Services best practices
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc261832(TechNet.10).aspx
Microsoft Office Forms Server TechNet TechCenter
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/office/bb267350.aspx
InfoPath Forms Services roadmap
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc262885.aspx
InfoPath 2007 features that are unavailable in InfoPath Forms Services
http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/infopath/HA102105871033.aspx
Forms Server 2007 Home Page
http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/formsserver/FX100490391033.aspx
InfoPath 2007 Home Page
http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/infopath/FX100487661033.aspx
Planning and architecture for Office Forms Server 2007
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc303371(TechNet.10).aspx
Plan InfoPath Forms Services
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc262498(TechNet.10).aspx
Office Developer Center: InfoPath 2007 Resource Center
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/office/aa905443.aspx
InfoPath Forms Services Architecture
http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms772323.aspx
Form Development and Deployment Lifecycle
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms772031.aspx
Creating InfoPath Form Templates That Work With Forms Services
http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-gb/library/aa945450(VS.80).aspx
Support: Microsoft Help and Support: Forms Server 2007 Solution Center
http://support.microsoft.com/ph/11846
SharePoint
Plan for performance and capacity (Office SharePoint Server)
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc262971(TechNet.10).aspx
Plan for performance and capacity (Windows SharePoint Services)
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc288124(TechNet.10).aspx
White paper: Intel Performance Testing of Windows SharePoint Services (WP)
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc288383(TechNet.10).aspx
How to Optimize a SharePoint Server 2007 Web Content Management Site for Performance
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb727371.aspx
White paper: Planning and Monitoring SQL Server Storage for Windows SharePoint Services: Performance Recommendations and Best Practices
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc287996(TechNet.10).aspx
ASP.NET
ASP.NET Performance
http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/44e5wy6k.aspx
ASP.NET Session State Overview
http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms178581.aspx
Developing High-Performance ASP.NET Applications
http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/5dws599a.aspx
Monitoring ASP.NET Application Performance
http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/3xxk09t8.aspx
SQL Server
Performance (Database Engine)
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb510669(SQL.100).aspx
Monitoring (Database Engine)
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb510705(SQL.100).aspx
Monitoring and Testing
Life-Cycle Performance Testing for Eliminating Last-Minute Surprises
http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb905531.aspx
Server Performance and Scalability Killers
http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms951773.aspx
Performance Counters in the .NET Framework
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/w8f5kw2e.aspx
Books
Designing Forms for Microsoft Office InfoPath and Forms Services 2007 (Microsoft .NET Development Series)
By Scott Roberts and Hagen Green
Publisher: Addison-Wesley (c. 2007)
ISBN 0321410599
http://www.informit.com/store/product.aspx?isbn=0321410599
A couple of great online books from the folks in Patterns and Practices:
Improving .NET Application Performance and Scalability
http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms998530.aspx
Performance Testing Guidance for Web Applications
http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb924375.aspx
Blogs and Newsgroups
Pashman's InfoPath Goldmine: Tips and Tricks for Tuning Forms Services Performance
http://blogs.msdn.com/timpash/archive/2007/08/02/tips-and-tricks-for-tuning-forms-services-performance.aspx
Performance Research, Part 1: What the 80/20 Rule Tells Us about Reducing HTTP Requests
http://yuiblog.com/blog/2006/11/28/performance-research-part-1/
The first article in a series about research done by Yahoo into web page performance optimization.
Agile Testing: Performance vs. load vs. stress testing
http://agiletesting.blogspot.com/2005/02/performance-vs-load-vs-stress-testing.html
Ben Curry: Using Performance Monitor (perfmon.exe) to Monitor SharePoint Server 2007
http://mindsharpblogs.com/ben/archive/2007/02/14/1569.aspx
Ben Curry: SharePoint Server 2007 Performance Counters
http://mindsharpblogs.com/ben/archive/2008/05/07/4806.aspx
Thom Robbins .NET Weblog: InfoPath Tips and Tricks
http://blogs.msdn.com/trobbins/archive/tags/InfoPath+Tips+and+Tricks/default.aspx
Joel Oleson's Blog - SharePoint Land:
Performance & Scale
http://blogs.msdn.com/joelo/archive/tags/Performance+_2600_amp_3B00_+Scale/default.aspx
Good List of Performance Counters
http://blogs.msdn.com/joelo/archive/2007/01/16/good-list-of-performance-counters.aspx
S.Y.M. Wong-A-Ton: Enterprise Solutions
http://enterprise-solutions.swits.net/
Paul Vick - Panopticon Central: The Ten Rules of Performance
http://www.panopticoncentral.net/archive/2004/02/10/270.aspx
Technorati - infopath Blogs, Photos, Videos and more on Technorati
http://technorati.com/tag/InfoPath
Discussions in Infopath General Questions
http://www.microsoft.com/office/community/en-us/default.mspx?dg=microsoft.public.infopath&lang=en&cr=US
Use this newsgroup to communicate with the InfoPath community.
MSDN Forums: SharePoint - InfoPath Forms Services
http://forums.microsoft.com/MSDN/ShowForum.aspx?ForumID=1206&SiteID=1
This forum is another place you can ask questions about Forms Services.
Comments
Anonymous
June 30, 2008
PingBack from http://stocks-options-trading.info/options-trading/?p=1326Anonymous
July 03, 2008
InfoPath team blog is active again with a new seriesAnonymous
July 16, 2008
If you want to run Visual Studio web tests with InfoPath Forms Services 2007 check out this codeplex project: http://www.codeplex.com/ipfswebtestAnonymous
September 01, 2008
These links are from the InfoPath Team Blog I think they are essentials http://blogs.msdn.com/infopath/archive/2008/06/30/designing-browser-enabled-forms-for-performance-in-infopath-forms-services-part-6.aspxAnonymous
October 05, 2008
Algunos vínculos interesantes para la semana : 1 -  Una interesante solución para equipos o servidoresAnonymous
January 16, 2009
An excellent series of articles on browser based Infopath forms. It is a must read for any Infopath developerAnonymous
April 06, 2009
InfoPath 2007 plus IPFS definitely provides the richest solution for online forms, and the recommendations in these series were useful to us. However, I do wonder whether there are already largescale IPFS implementations of something more substantial than the common examples of expense forms etc. We are facing major performance problems and runtime errors with our InfoPath / IPFS based electronic Case Report Forms system for clinical trials. Our form templates typically contain 200+ validation checks and a generic managed code of 3000+ lines with a dozen web services calls. Even when we apply the recommendations in these series the performance is bad (10 secs to load / submit a form) with a single user accessing the server farm of 6 DL360G5 servers (ISA, dedicated IIS, dedicated sharepoint, SQL, DC's and services). Concurrent access makes things dramatically worse. In addition, browsers at end user computers consistently give runtime errors, most notoriously with IE6 but also with IE7. We do hope that the InfoPath / IPFS team will bring us further improvements, starting with SP2, since, as I said, the solution by design is really great.