ADO.NET Cookbook

Chapter 9. Optimizing .NET Data Access

Introduction

This chapter examines asynchronous processing, caching, paging, batching, and class-specific methods and techniques to improve application performance. Before optimizing any application, profile it to ensure that you have a good understanding of where the real bottlenecks are.

A query can run asynchronously on background threads to improve application responsiveness and perceived performance by not blocking processing. This can also be used to give the user an opportunity to cancel a request that is taking too long. Recipe 9.1 shows how to use a background thread to run a query. Recipe 9.2 shows how to let the user cancel a query running on a background thread.

Caching data allows data to be retrieved once and saved in order to service subsequent requests for the same data. The load on the database server is reduced, potentially improving application performance. On the downside, cached data becomes less current (and less accurate) over time. The .NET Framework provides classes to allow both client- and server-side caching of data. On the client-side, caching requires few server-side resources, but increases network bandwidth required to move data back and forth with each round trip. Caching on the server-side consumes more network resources; however, it is less expensive in terms of bandwidth required. In either case, applications should be designed to retrieve the minimum data necessary to optimize performance and scalability. ...