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WebService slow on first call

I have a Visual Basic 2005 application runniing in windows CE 5.0. The VB application calls a WebService. The first time the WebService is called it takes 3 to 4 seconds (which is slow). After this it takes less than 1 second. If I leave my form and return to my form the WebService is slow again. The webService is created in the Main module.

How to make the first call also fast?

Regards,

dgb

IUFITS

It's very likely slow on the web site that the web service is on. Asp.Net sites will leave memory after they timeout and when it gets a hit, it comes back into memory which takes a few seconds (I'm not sure how long this is until the time out occurs by default, until the last session times out probably). This is almost certainly the issue unless the web service is seeing it's 2nd and 3rd run performance increase from say, a SQL query being cached. There's a few things you can do about this, #1 being the easiest:

1.) Have a job run that touches a page on the web-site every 20 minutes or so. This will keep the site in memory. You don't even have to execute code, just touch a blank page. I've used an http command line program I wrote to do this pulling up a blank page before people arrive in the morning so the first person doesn't get a slow load.
2.) Make sure the web site with the web service isn't in Debug mode which will slow things down greatly (this is set in the web.config file). If it has to load up debug symbols it will run slower all the time.

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IUFITS

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