Does DNN render a page with multiple controls serially or internally does it have some in-built mechanism to render them in async/parallel mode? WSRP portlets are touting async mechanism as their selling point and hence I wanted to understand how DNN handles such an issue.

Also, will I understand the DNN architecture correctly  - everything is loaded in-process in DNN, as in, there is no separation of Portal and Application. if I wanted to load up a million rows into a module, it could bring down the portal, for eg, with DNN. Therefore, the scalability of the portal is highly dependent on the module you consume - a badly behaving module will adversely affect the portal.

If my thinking is wrong please correct me or if I am right point me to best practices.

We are evaluating DNN as a web application framework along with portal vendors and hence the questions.