Automatic performance boosting

Appeon has a number of features built into its infrastructure/framework to instantly or automatically boost the performance of PowerBuilder applications when deployed to the Web. Many of these features are always on and transparently working in the background to boost performance. Other features are user-selectable and must be configured. The following table is a list of these features and the configuration of these features is covered in Performance-Related Settings.

Table 1. Appeon Performance Boosting Features

Performance Feature

Description

Location

Just-in-Time Downloading

As the application is run and various windows are opened, only the Web files required for that particular window are downloaded at that point in time. Once the Web files are downloaded, they are cached in the Internet Explorer temporary files folder and are not downloaded again.

Appeon Infrastructure

10X Web File Compression

All JavaScript files are compressed by as much as 10X, then the compressed version of the file is downloaded over HTTP to the Web browser.

PowerServer Toolkit

10X Data File Compression

For each DataWindow or DataStore retrieval, the result set is first retrieved by the application server, automatically compressed by 10 times in most cases, and then downloaded over HTTP to the Web browser. Utilizing AJAX technology, only the DataWindow or DataStore is refreshed and the rest of the screen remains intact.

Appeon Infrastructure

DataWindow Data Caching

For each DataWindow or DataStore, the developer has the option of enabling caching of the result set. Appeon enables caching at the application server, Web server, and Web browser so every tier of the Web architecture is benefiting from the best performance and scalability possible.

AEM

Merge files

Merges multiple JavaScript files into a single file to reduce the number of HTTP requests and corresponding overhead.

PowerServer Toolkit

Multi-thread Downloading

Downloads are multi-threaded to boost the application runtime performance.

AEM

Custom Libraries Downloading

Any custom libraries can be automatically downloaded and installed with your Web application, or if the libraries are very large in size, you can disable this feature and distribute the libraries some other fashion.

AEM

Database Connection Pooling

By deploying to a true n-tier Web environment with Appeon, you can take advantage of Database Connection Pooling, a feature of most application servers. Connection Pooling does exactly that, it establishes a pool of connections to your database, which is shared among your clients. So rather than each client having its own dedicated connection to the database, a fewer number of connections can be rotated among all the users. For large deployments with thousands of clients this can boost database scalability noticeably.

Appeon Infrastructure