Finding client-side bottlenecks in Silverlight

Question

I'm in charge of load testing and finding bottlenecks in a Silverlight application - no functionality testing, just load and performance testing.

I don't know much about the underlying core of Silverlight so my question is, is it feasible to compare load and performance tests to find client-side bottlenecks or is Silverlight unlikely to contain fixable client-side bottlenecks? Does Silverlight allow for much client-side processing or is it thin-client?

If my question needs clarification, please let me know.

Answer 1

Silverlight is NOT a thin client, it allows for heavy client-side processing and so the request is quite valid.

Silverlight is a dialect / subset of WPF, the technology that replaces Windows Forms, another fat-client :)

Here are a few ideas on how to go about this "perf testing" (it's not really load testing because a client can only be accessed by 1 user, so the load is 1 user anyway).

• you can instrument the code to output performance data (i.e. track how long it takes for some operations to complete). Look at ETW instrumentation.

• make sure you have scenarios for moderate data load and big data load (e.g. if you display a list of items, look at displaying 10 items and 100 items)

• look at the code and understand where caching is involved; this has a major impact on perf and can influence your data;