Improving WebCenter Performance – Part 1 (IIS Addendum)

If you read my previous post you might be wondering if you can achieve a similar performance with a different Web Server such as Microsoft Information Server. In this article I’ll describe the steps you need to follow to have IIS not only applying content compression, but also rewriting the expiration data in the HTTP header.

STEPS

1. Open the Internet Information Services Manager, right-click on the Default Web Site option and select Properties.



2. The window below should show up. Check the “Expire after” option and set it to 1,193 Hour(s). It will change the HTTP header Cache-control parameter from Expire to max-age in all local static resources, which solves the Internet Explorer caching issue.



3. Click on the MIME Types button and add the following ones:



4. Select the ISAPI Filters tab and check where the WebLogic ISAPI plug-in (wlFilter) is installed. The plug-in allows a smooth integration of WebLogic's HTTP functionality into Microsoft IIS.



Under the iisforward.dll’s directory you should find iisproxy.ini. Open the ini file and add the FileCaching=ON property as shown below. It will add another level of buffer to IIS and force it to add Content-Length property to the HTTP Header.

WebLogicHost=<WebCenter / Load Balancer host> 
WebLogicPort=<WebCenter / Load Balancer port> 
ConnectTimeoutSecs=20 
ConnectRetrySecs=2 
WlForwardPath=/webcenter,/rest 
Debug=OFF 
FileCaching=ON 

5. Make sure content compression is still setup. Right-click on Web Sites and choose properties.



Select the Service tab. The “Compress static files” option must be checked.




Don’t forget to restart IIS after the changes.