Sitecore 5.3.1 performing badly for you (too)?

Yea, I know it's been a while :P Been extremely busy on lots of projects of a non-Sitecore nature, so haven't really been getting new material to write about. Until today that is. Ok so, 2 colleagues were pretty much getting ready to tear an entire solution apart, looking for the source of a massive performance issue inside the Sitecore client. We're talking like 30 seconds+, for clicking any item in the Content Editor - fun stuff, I tell ya. Ok, so the SQL databases were not set to "Simple Recovery" - this on it's own caused a growth in the log-files to the neighbourhood of 3 gigabytes. And here comes me, thinking I'll save the day before lives are lost - and quickly switch it to "Simple" and sort out the performance issue. You know - two birds with one stone, kinda thing. But no. Instead I found myself getting caught up in endless log prowling activity, minuteously replacing single files one by one, to try and track down this problem. Eventually I turn to a colleague of mine, who has worked pretty much non-stop on Sitecore projects for the past 2 years - to see if he has a helping hand for me. Indeed. He turned me to a solution he had opened in the Sitecore support site, back in May 2007.

Change source to GUID on these /sitecore/templates/system/Templates/Sections/Appearance/Appearance/__Subitems Sorting – Source: {B01EB085-82BC-4D79-B15F-90EAB9E98062} /sitecore/templates/system/Templates/Sections/Publishing/ Publishing /__Publishing groups – Source: {D9E44555-02A6-407A-B4FC-96B9026CAADD} This should resolve your performance issue.

And sure enough. Without really having a clue why, this actually solved any and all issues we had with performance on the solution - just like that. Go figure. The support issue is closed with the words; "It is already fixed in Sitecore 5.3.1 and it is related just to Sitecore 5.3.1.". Who knows....