Hi All,

I was talking with Stephen Walther tonight (author of ASP.NET Unleashed) and he has done some testing of data access with ASP.NET using different scenarios. I thought I would pass on his results.

Using a DataReader instead of a DataSet is 16% to 50% faster, depending on the configuration of the DataSet like enforcing constraints.

Using an ArrayList resulted in the same speed performance as a DataReader. Using an ArrayList gives you the added ability to have static representation of the data whereas the DataReader does not.

Using the SqlClient set of classes is 52% faster than using the OleDb classes when accessing SQL Server.

Using C# code to access data via a DataReader object is 4% faster than the VB.NET equivalent with VB.NET Option Strict set ON.

Using a SQL Server Stored Procedure was 3% faster that using a dynamic Select statement. The reason this difference isn't greater is SQL Server's ability to compile dynamic statements and store them temporarily.

Accessing columns in a DataReader by ordinal is 14% faster than by name. Using the GetString method is even slower by 11% than accessing by name.

There is a 4% penalty of accessing DataReader column names using the wrong case. ADO.NET has to go through an extra step to resolve the inproper case.

Using an Inline DataReader is 63% faster than using a DataGrid. A DataGrid has a lot of overhead associated with binding the data.

Using a DataGrid with a DataReader is 6% faster than using a DataGrid with a DataSet.

Using DataGrid Templates is 24% slower than not using templates.

If you use DataGrid Templates, databinding using explicit casting is 9% faster than databinding using the Eval function.

Explicit casting:

< %# ((DbDataRecord)Container.DataItem)["ProductName"] %>

Eval Function:

< %# DataBinder.Eval(Container, "DataItem.ProductName") %>

Using the DataGrid's ItemDataBound event handler to databind controls is 46% slower than using explicit casting shown above.

Caching a DataSet to use in a DataGrid is 72% faster then not using caching.

Using a cached DataSet is significantly faster (he didn't have the exact numbers calculated) than using a DataReader.

Using AutoGeneratedColumns for a DataGrid is 24% faster than specifically selecting columns.