.net vs. cold fusion in speed

I do front end and basic/intermediate back end stuff - forms, database driven content, shopping. We use cold fusion. Company designs and hosts and has used cold fusion for years. Recently, a guy certified in .net has sold the owners of the company on the idea that .net is 50% faster than cold fusion - not in development but in serving up pages. If you did a page using .net and the same page using cold fusion, .net would be considerably faster. Is this true? How is it faster?

As far as I know the difference between cold fusion, .net, php and whatever is basically the difference between spanish or german - it's the sql queries and the size of pages and images that determine that speed.

School me!

There are worlds of differences between the two, beyond what you mentioned. One of the main efficiencies is that .net is compiled code that runs much faster. Again, the list would be long on the differences you should do some tooling around and see what you find.

As far as 50% faster? You would have to benchmark comparable sites to come up with validation for such a comment. There are benchmarks and white papers out there that show performance differences you may have a look for that as well. Honestly the main one that comes to mind is the .net benchmark of the PetShop application which is Java Based not ColdFusion. But the PetShop was written by Java to show Java in all it's greatness and MIcrosoft rebutted with superior benchmarks. And settle down Java coders because there are plenty of arguements to bring up on this issue but I am trying to give this guy some help in methodology for investigating his issue.

Whew ---- anyway, assuming all factors are the same and the only difference is the usage of .Net and not ColdFusion I would tend to agree with "The Guy" that performace will be better on the .Net version.

With what I've read the performance difference only seems to apply to huge amounts of traffic on a complicated application that tests the limits of the server(s). If the application is normal ol form stuff or inventory listings and the server's resources isn't peaking above 60%, is there a noticable difference?

That doesn't sound right to me... usually the papers you read show you the extreme levels or nth degree reagrding certain items because that is just how you measure things, "by pushing on the gas pedal." When the fact is that if your 10 small websites are each more efficient then everyone sees the effects.

When I was looking around I saw lots of graphs created by the proponents of .net that showed similar performance on the low end of traffic. The seperation in performance only started mulitplying at the high end of the traffic load. Maybe that's where that 50% figure came from, the breaking point at maximum capacity.

I understand that if the processing is faster it's faster whether doing one small thing or a million big things. I just meant that the speed difference between cf and .net decreases enough that it loses its relevance when dealing with simple chores in regular sites on servers that aren't stressed at all. Plus, even a small mistake in design will easily outweigh the speed difference.

I think we're going to do a comparison between the two at my work. Take a common task, I'll work it up in cf, .net guy will do his thing and we'll compare both the time to create the application and how fast each works on the same server. I think that's the only way to really find out where the money is.

I think you are on the right track in identifying your business needs and making the choice. And you are sort of making the point for reasons to use .net. Assuming your theory is correct that the effects are most seen when you have huge traffic and are pushing the limits... That means, if you use CF then you have to spend more money on hardware sooner than if you were running .net site and that means less profits. This also assumes that the business wants as many sites as possible! The flip side to that is the retraining or downtime costs to convert to a new technology. The comparison of the two may offset or whatever but are definite factors in long term busines direction/goals.

Good Luck!

p.s. My wife is a developer and they build hundreds of crappy little sites that have minimal load. They basically are glorified html pages with some <cfinclude>'s. She had never coded CF before and stepped in without much problem. I don't think it will be as easy to step into .net.

If sever performance were the only factor then maybe .net would be it but cf is much more efficient in site creation. That's where profit is affected. Found out that CF 6.1 is 170% faster than previous version.

Sorry if I gave off impression that I'm just a front ender. I've been programming for over 10 years. I've had artistic talent my whole life so I like designing websites. I get to use both skills.

What's hard is figuring out how to build good looking, easy to use sites that please both the client and the site's visitors. Learning a new language is easy. Just a matter of syntax.

Thanks for taking the time.