Performance benefits of upgrading Richfaces to newer version

Question

I have a client that's running an application based on JBoss 4.0.5, Seam 1.2 and RichFaces 3.0.1. Their system is having performance problems due to the fact that a lot of data is coming back from the server to be displayed on screen and it seems like the rendering of that data is taking forever. The data brought back is displayed in a tabbed interface, but the tabs aren't currently being loaded individually, but all at once.

I'm trying to build up a case to present to the client on the benefits of upgrading to never version of RichFaces, which, as I understand it, has added a great number of features related to tabbed panels and being able to use ajax to page the data and load the chunks you actually need to display at the moment, and not the rest that's in other tabs.

The move to a newer version of RichFaces will also result in never versions of Jboss and Seam, as the current production build of RichFaces 3.2.1 requires JSF 1.2.

IF anyone has some suggestions or experience on performance of current versions RichFaces, paging, etc, I would really appreciate some feedback.

Answer 1

Use a profiler and do it for yourself. Only you have the application. Only you know which combination of components are "slow". I think you can measure it for yourself very fast.

p.s. show us the results ,-)

Answer 2

I find the Apache implementation of JSF1.2 much better the the Apache implementation of JSF1.0. I use a little RichFace 3.2 and it seems fine, still a bit too much information being sent on the ajax requests from the client so RichFaces Ajax executes much slower then a hand crafted AJAX solution, but code very much faster in RichFaces.

Answer 3

I haven't noticed much of a performance improvement by upgrading through various Richfaces versions. You're better off optimizing the code that is involved in the rendering - for example checking whether code is called mutliple times (as is the case when logic is placed in a getter).

I've found the bean-timing interceptor (@MeasureCalls) that Tobias Hill outlines in the Seam forum to be absolutely fantastic - more so than a profiler for specific problems (probably less so if you don't know where to start looking). It lets me track down those methods that are called more often than required and allows me to streamline my beans.

The forum link is : http://www.seamframework.org/Community/SeamPerformanceProblemRewardingWorkaround

Answer 4

One warning... I recently upgraded to JBoss 5.1.0GA, JSF 1.2, etc... so that our software stays current, but there is a drawback. JBoss 5 uses -significantly- more memory than JBoss 4, and takes longer to start. It would be wise for you to test our your new configuration on one machine before attempting to switch system-wide.