title: JSF view getting rebuild on each ajax request
body: <p>I'm having a performance problem with my JSF/RichFaces/Facelets ajax requests and from what I can tell its because the entire component tree is being rebuild on each ajax request.  This is happening even if I use ajaxSingle=true, wrap sections in a4j:region, declare a single section for rerendering or none at all.  Our page is a dynamic page with many nested levels.  The page may contain around 800-900 fields (inputText, rich calendars, selectOneMenus, etc).  The initial load time is an issue, but I understand that issue, its a lot of fields.  Once we have that initial build/render time though we have designed all other actions to be ajax and only reRender what is needed.  From facelets debug logs I see messages like this on any ajax call:</p>
  
  <pre><code>2011-08-24 22:19:03,054 DEBUG [facelets.viewhandler] (http-0.0.0.0-8080-2) Took
  24445ms to build view: /oconsole/appfile.xhtml
  2011-08-24 22:19:09,377 DEBUG [facelets.viewhandler] (http-0.0.0.0-8080-2) Took
  6323ms to render view: /oconsole/appfile.xhtml
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>I'm not sure if something we are doing is causing the rebuild of the entire component tree, or facelets is determining this need required for some reason (stale cache?).  Here is our stack:
  JBoss 5.1
  JSF 1.2
  RichFaces. 3.3.3.Final
  Facelets 1.1.15
  Seam 2.1.2</p>
  
  <p>I have tried adding some context parameters to see if they would help, but they did nothing:
  facelets.BUILD_BEFORE_RESTORE = false
  facelets.REFRESH_PERIOD = -1 or 5 (as in 5min)</p>
  
  <p>Is there anyway to tell if our views are being cached properly?  We do not delcare a state saving method, so I believe it defaults to server side.  All our requests happen within seam long running conversations.  I wasn'te sure if this plays a factor as I thought views get cached at session level?  Any help would be greatly appreciated, thank you.</p>
  
  <p>Update after more debugging:</p>
  
  <p>The AjaxViewHandler (which has a member variable of the FaceletsViewHandler) has developmentMode=true set.  I'm not sure if this is causing facelets to not cache any views so any changes would be refreshed during development cycles...??  Its been very difficult to find any information on facelets/JSF caching of views and the behavior and controlling that.  Furthermore, when I add config param:</p>
  
  <pre><code>&lt;context-param&gt;
  &lt;param-name&gt;facelets.DEVELOPMENT&lt;/param-name&gt;
  &lt;param-value&gt;false&lt;/param-value&gt;
  &lt;/context-param&gt;
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>This did not take!  In debugger I still see true set.  Since we have a lot of subviews I also tried
  com.sun.faces.numberOfLogicalViews and
  com.sun.faces.numberOfViewsInSession
  to 1000 up from 15(default) and this had no effect.</p>
  
  <p>I also tried changing to client side state saving without any luck.  Running out of ideas....hope someone can help....</p>
  
  <p>It seems Seam 2.1 auto-initializes RichFaces and I'm not sure if that has something to do with it.....</p>