Newbie question. Why would I rely on Arrays and managing an array verses just getting the data from a database? Generally, I would be working on a box that would have a SQL db on it or on the same network. Would I be taking a significant performance hit not using Arrays?

Thanks

Bryan

Depends. if you plan on saving the data or running reports against the data then sql is best. Ifthe data is temporary then use arrays. There is a performance hit for going to SQL but it will not clock up your server's CPU cycles, just time it takes to log into SQL and time it takes for SQL to return the data you queried for. An array takes up memory on your app server but if you are just playing with the data temporarily and it isn't that much then arrays are good for performance. Use SQL only to storing data for later retrieval.

I'm not quite sure what comparison you are trying to make. In what situation would you trade off using an array versus a database?

On a potentially related note, ASP.NET 2.0 also has built-in features that provide for the caching of data from a database in web server memory, which can improve performance and reduce the number of requests the web server has to make to the database server for data.

You can also use datasets to make one initial call to the database, grab all of the data you want to work with in your application, then make all of the changes to the data in web server memory, then at the end of the session, push all of the changes back at once back to the database. I guess this is supposed to allow you to get more connections out of a single database server. I've not used this yet.

Neil Timmerman
Programmer II
School of Medicine
University of Missouri Columbia