Performance guide

High performance keeps stores responsive and lowers infrastructure cost. The following practices help you squeeze the most out of Smartstore.

Build and deployment

• Compile the application in Release configuration.

• Use view precompilation to remove first-request delays caused by Razor compilation.

• Enable compression and HTTP/2 on the web server or reverse proxy.

Caching

Smartstore provides static and request level caches through the ICache abstractions. Cache expensive results and invalidate them when underlying data changes.

var key = CacheKey.With("homepage:featured-products");
var products = await _cache.GetAsync(key, () => LoadFeaturedProductsAsync());

For multi-node setups configure a distributed cache in appsettings.json so cached entries are shared across servers.

Output caching

Cache whole page responses with the output cache module to avoid regenerating markup for anonymous visitors.

Mark pages or view components as cacheable by registering their routes. Implement ICacheableRouteProvider in your module and return the route patterns:

internal sealed class CacheableRoutes : ICacheableRouteProvider
{
    public int Order => 0;

    public IEnumerable<string> GetCacheableRoutes()
    {
        return new[]
        {
            "Catalog/Category",        // full page
            "vc:SearchBox"             // view component
        };
    }
}

When data changes inject IOutputCacheInvalidationObserver and call InvalidateByRouteAsync to purge affected entries.

public override void BuildPipeline(RequestPipelineBuilder builder)
{
    var observer = builder.ApplicationBuilder.ApplicationServices
        .GetRequiredService<IOutputCacheInvalidationObserver>();

    // Invalidate cached category pages when SKU visibility toggles
    observer.ObserveSettingProperty<CatalogSettings>(
        s => s.ShowProductSku,
        p => p.InvalidateByRouteAsync("Catalog/Category"));
}

Database access

• Prefer eager loading to avoid N+1 query patterns.

• Use DbContextScope with forceNoTracking for read-only operations.

• Pool contexts via the pooled DbContextFactory when processing large batches.

Static assets

Bundle and minify JavaScript and CSS in production. The built‑in bundler emits hashed file names that can be cached by CDNs and browsers for long periods.

Processed media files are stored in the thumbs cache so the original image is resized only once. See imaging for available resize tokens.

Profiling and diagnostics

Use the MiniProfiler diagnostics tool to inspect slow requests. The widget shows executed queries and timings, helping you track down bottlenecks.

General tips

• Keep logging at Information level in production and periodically purge old rows with IDbLogService.

• Use async APIs throughout to free up threads.

• Avoid synchronous network calls or blocking I/O inside request handlers.