What is the best way to store a large number of local settings on a per user basis?

Question

I have a C#.net application targeted to .net 3.5 developed in VS2008. The application can support multiple users. Each user will have their own preferences for things like screen sizes, fonts, report formats, and things of that sort.

I am using the "Settings" in the properties for the project to save this stuff, but I will need approximately 200 - 300 things saved before it is all said and done.

It seems to be working fine, but is this the best way to accomplish this?

Thanks for any inputs.

Pete

AL MUBARAK · Answer

Hi Peter if you are facing the difficulties to store the multiples of users. make sure to define the user's with separation of groups. So you can easily manage by the DB and interface as well.

Peter George · Answer

Thanks Murali for your response. I agree that DB operations are faster but since the users are not required to log in with unique ID's it would be difficult to save the data on a per user basis. If I use the settings it saves the data to the local machine so as long as the user logs in from their pc (which is normally the case with this application) the local settings are available.

Muralidharan Deenathayalan · Answer

I would prefer to store these values into database rather storing the settings file. Because as per my knowledge file operations are costlier than database operations. If your file size grown bigger then file reading and writing will take more timebut in database you can increase the permformance by creating indices. Database Vs Files