Datasets and Performance

Question

We have been using o-o techniques when developing our Windows Forms applications and have layered our applications so that each has an Application Layer Business Logic Layer and Data Access Layer we have used datasets to read and persist data to the database. We are about to re-write one one of the applications as an ASP.NET application and can re-use all our classes from our Business Logic and Data Access Layer with no changes however I have read some reports of people having performance problems when using datasets with web applications. I was hoping that as long as we do not populate the datasets with huge amounts of data then all should be OK The web server will be used by up to 1000 people. Any comments/problems with performance when using datsets with ASP.NET would be appreciated. Thanks John

mrocky · Answer

You mention that you will be expecting 1000 people to use the server. I do not know what your time is valued at but if you have any slow down it may make more sense to add another server than to spend all the time rewriting the code and having two code bases to deal with. The ease at which you can use them and the flexability they provide can outway any performance pentalty you encounter. Not to mention you have built in support for sorting and evaluations that can come at a great cost by other methods.

david 0 · Answer

*Most* of the performance issues arise when 1) loading extra data 2) doing sloppy updates. 3) using named indices into structures (i.e. row[somecolumnname]) Avoid these (regardless of if you are using a dataset and all should be fine. note: The wizard generated strong typed datasets suffer from ALL of these problems!