Performance Tuning and Optimizing ASP.NET Applications

Highlights

ADO.NET provides managed data access and provides an impressive level of both functionality and flexibility. It also provides an unprecedented level of support for disconnected data access, which creates many new possibilities, such as the ability of disconnected Extensible Markup Language (XML) Web services to exchange DataSet objects across the wire. The ADO.NET programming model represents a new paradigm ”one that requires innovative thinking to get the most out of it.

The goal of this chapter is to highlight ways for you to maximize the efficiency and performance of your ADO.NET code. There is no substitute for good design decisions in software development, and this is especially true for ADO.NET code. Well-designed ADO.NET code is efficient and performs optimally. Most applications are data-driven, so the application's performance and quality is often directly related to how well it handles data access and updates.

This chapter focuses on the following points:

• A review of the ADO.NET programming model, including the advantages and disadvantages of specific data objects

• A review of the role of XML in ADO.NET with a special focus on the DataSet object

• A review of data access best practices and design decisions, using common data access and update scenarios

Generally speaking, this chapter is equally divided between a review of the ADO.NET programming model and a review of how to make good data access design decisions. This chapter is not intended to be a complete tutorial on using ADO.NET, although the first half of the chapter may appear that way. Instead, this chapter aims to give the advanced developer a new perspective on optimal data access.