Hi Peter,
Absolutely no argument from me on that count!! My experience always has been and continues to improve that d3 on WinTEL is spectacular!
My issue was I needed [need?] to demonstrate that differences in perfomance between two clients is largely because of their choice of IT infrastructure.
My app is d3/win built with designbais & uses IE as the client. Previously it was d3/win built with early SB+ & uses Hostaccess terminal emulator as the client.
Two of my clients migrated from old to new; one decided to upgrade their entire IT server/client/lan system; and the second decided to leave things alone. BUT the real kicker is when one considers the fundamental IT architecture.
First client has in-house upgraded hardware: Thumping big purpose-built server, running a few vm's but with each vm allocated fixed resources; and then umpteen [there's a lot] of physical desktop PC's on a traditional LAN. It's a screamer. Second client wanted to remain on their server, but with 'virtual' desktops all running as concurrent RDC sessions off a second dedicated server. Similar concept to 'Terminal Services'. The point is, you've got umpteen clients all trying to run off the one piece of hardware. To make matters worse, they then decided to plop both the main server & the RDC server into the cloud.
So they went from lightweight character mode terminal emulators to graphically intensive IE clients; multiple instances all trying to run on the one chunk of [virtual] hardware.
Naturally, when there is an IE graphically intensive process running [as is the case when IE is basically formatting the display]; response times plummet.
Of course the client is blaming the software systems.
So, I wanted to find some tools to benchmark these two systems for direct head-to-head "comparo" at each level of the entire IT chain. I've done it for the servers with some startling results. Also I built a pretty crap d3 routine which basically showed that d3 was fine in terms of it's processing; although more grunt would always be better. I have no idea how to benchmark IIS on each server; but that just leaves the clients. I've already demonstrated that the client is struggling under IE, unless it has grunt.
Fortunately, I have been able to 'tweak' the specific web forms which are the slowest; and help them get back to a level of performance they find acceptable. But the fundamental issue remains, and I'm afraid it will come up time and time again as the system grows: their IT setup is inappropriate, and that was their choice.
Cheers!