How to enable gzip compression in IIS7

Overview:
          Gzip compression is used to compress your content and then deliver to client. Today's modern browser supports compression. So it is a good idea to deliver the static content after compression, this way you can save lots of bandwidth and your page will be load faster as it has to send compressed data.

How to enable gzip compression in IIS7

The first and most thing is to make sure the compression module is installed on not? check the below mentioned link for installation process.

http://www.iis.net/configreference/system.webserver/httpcompression


Basic steps to enable the HTTP compression on static Content

• Start > Run > Inetmgr > hit enter
• Select your web site
• In Features View, double click Compression
• Check the Enable Static content compression
• Click Apply in the Actions pane.

Above steps must enabled the static compression and your js, css etc static contents should be compressed.

Exceptional Settings

Sometimes you will not get your content compressed after doing above mentioned steps. I recently got the experience and I would like to share the solution with you.

Set read permissions to applicationHost.config file for IIS_ISURS group. 

• You will find this file at C:\Windows\System32\inetsrv\config. 
• Right click to this file and click properties, now click on security tab
• Now click on Edit button
• Now click on Add button under Group or user name
• Now enter IIS_IUSRS 
• Click Check Names button
• Now Select Read & Execute and Read permission
• Click Apply, then Click OK

Check the httpCompression types

    Check the httpCompression section in applicationHost.config file, you should find <add mimeType="application/x-javascript" enabled="true" />. If this is correct then it should be correctly configured in your IIS. 

• Now go to IIS Manager and select your site.
• Click on Features View from bottom
• Now click on MIME Types
• Find the .js entry
• If the .js extension has MIME Type = "application/javascript" then remove that entry.
• Now click Add from Actions pane
• give extension as .js
• give MIME type as application/x-javascript
• click apply.
• Restart the website.

This will start compressing your .js files.

.css files would compressed automatically if other configurations are correct.

How to add Expiry Headers to Static Content from web.config

The easiest way to add the expiry headers or cache control in static content from web.config file is:

Add following line of code in web.config file.
 <system.webServer>
    <staticContent>
       <clientCache cacheControlCustom="public"
    cacheControlMaxAge="720:00:00" cacheControlMode="UseMaxAge" />
    </staticContent>  

  </system.webServer>


Look at the value cacheControlMaxAge="720:00:00"  it suggests the static content will be cached in users browsers for 30 days. This works perfectly and this is the easiest way to handle the cache control in asp.net web site.

Query to find Costly Queries in sql server

Today i found one script which shows top 50 costly queries. It takes those queries who consumes most CPU.

SELECT TOP 50
 [Average CPU used] = total_worker_time / qs.execution_count,
 [Total CPU used] = total_worker_time,
 [Execution count] = qs.execution_count,
 [Individual Query] = SUBSTRING (qt.text,qs.statement_start_offset/2,
         (CASE WHEN qs.statement_end_offset = -1
            THEN LEN(CONVERT(NVARCHAR(MAX), qt.text)) * 2
          ELSE qs.statement_end_offset END -
qs.statement_start_offset)/2)
,[Parent Query] = qt.text
,DatabaseName = DB_NAME(qt.dbid)
FROM sys.dm_exec_query_stats qs
CROSS APPLY sys.dm_exec_sql_text(qs.sql_handle) as qt
ORDER BY [Average CPU used] DESC;

Script to get the number of rows in all tables

Here is the script to get the list of tables with number or rows in each table [SQL Server 2008]. This will help you when you want to know which tables are heavy. When it comes to performance issue this query is very helpful. Recently I find this query from here thanks to Jeremy Jameson. I added this query in this post as i want to make it handy.

SELECT sysobjects.Name , sysindexes.Rows 

FROM 

sysobjects 

INNER JOIN sysindexes 

ON sysobjects.id = sysindexes.id 

WHERE 

type = 'U' 

AND sysindexes.IndId < 2 

ORDER BY 

 2 desc



It will produce the result as shown below.


Table1 50000




Table2 45000




Table3 40000




Table4 10000


How To Enable Remote Access To MySQL Server on Windows Server

1. Go to the Start Menu and select Run to open a Command Prompt
2. Browse to the MySQL bin directory. I had to do

   C:>CD "Program FilesMySQLMySQL Server 4.1bin"

   Keep in mind that your directory structure might differ from mine depending on how you installed MySQL. Also you may have to do a few “Clear Directories” (i.e. “CD” or CD..) to get to the base of C:>.
3. Type in:

   mysql -u root -p

   and enter in your root password when prompted.
4. If you logged in successfully, you should see:

   mysql>

   and if not, then you will get something like:
   

   ERROR 1045 (28000): Access denied for user 'blah'@'localhost' (using password: YES)

5. Enter in

   GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON *.* TO 'USERNAME'@'IP' IDENTIFIED BY 'PASSWORD';

   What this will do is create a new user with ROOT privileges, so be very careful what account you are creating. If you are just using the root account, then replace USERNAME with root. And just so we are clear, USERNAME is the account you wish to create or use. IP is the physical IP address of the computer you wish to grant remote access to. If you enter ‘%’ instead of an IP number, that user will be able to remote access the MySQL server from any computer. PASSWORD is the password you wish to create if it’s a new user or the existing password of an existing account. And yes, you need to use the single quotation.
6. And finally, you want to run this last command:

   mysql> FLUSH PRIVILEGES;

7. To exit, just type:

   mysql> quit;

How to redirect from HTTP to HTTPS in ASP.NET

If you are a web developer and want to make an online shopping site, you will definitely asked to use SSL and use HTTPS request. Now the linked question in your mind is How do i redirect request from HTTP to HTTPS?

Here is the simple solution.

Go to Web.Config file and add below code stuff.

<rewrite>

<rules>

<rule name="Redirect to HTTPS" stopProcessing="true">

<match url="(.*)" />

<conditions>

<add input="{HTTPS}" pattern="^OFF$" />

</conditions>

<action type="Redirect" url="https://{HTTP_HOST}/{R:1}" />

</rule>

</rules>

</rewrite>

That's great your all request are now redirect to HTTPS. Wait this may not be happened with all the guys. Please make sure you have installed the URL Rewrite Module 2.0 available here.  If it is not installed and you try above code it will make your web.config file invalid and raise error.

After installing Rewrite Module 2.0 restart the IIS and your url redirect will start working.

How to prevent browser caching for css / javascript

Now a days i have an online shopping site for maintenance.
https://www.izabellondon.com
Since i have done lots of changes in the site, there are situations when we upload new css or javascript but client can not see the new changes because by default browser loads the css or javascript file from its cache memory if the URL is repeated. 


Then we have to ask our client to please clear your browser cache to get new changes. I am sure many of web developer has to face this situation then i decided not to ask our client for same thing.


I start wondering how to overcome this problem? after some google search i found the solution.


You need to add any random querystring after your call to javascript or css includes. for example.


CSS
<link href="/App_Templates/FrontEnd/Login.css?date=2012-07-02" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" />


Javascript
<script src="/Content/swfobject.js?version=2" type="text/javascript"></script>


It will resolve the issue and your client will not need to clear the cache to get new changes. Querystring in css/javascript call will always load file from the server instead of browser cache.


:)


wow


Happy Coding :)