I’m spending a few days this week learning about how to implement an enterprise search solution using Microsoft Office SharePoint Server (MOSS) 2007 (so expect a few SharePoint-related posts to follow over the next few days). I was intrigued to note that the Virtual PC image used for the training course included a number of “warm up” scripts for SharePoint. Not having come across this before, I was intrigued as to their purpose but my instructor (Martin Harwar from English Tiger) explained that the principle is equally applicable to all ASP.NET applications and is about improving the end user experience.

Normally, ASP.NET applications are compiled on a just in time (JIT) basis and this means that the first page load after making changes such as resetting IIS, refreshing application pools or editing web.config can be very slow. By “warming up” the application (accessing key pages deliberately), JIT compilation is triggered, meaning that when an end user accesses the page then it is already compiled (and hence fast).

Joel Oleson’s SharePoint Land has a much better explaination as well as the actual MOSS warmup scripts for download. There are also some more comments on warming up SharePoint at Andrew Connell’s SharePoint developer tips and tricks site.

Incidentally, the scripts on Joel’s site are intended for MOSS but can be modified for WSS (and I understand that the principle may be equally applicable to other ASP.NET web applications).