Dataset performance in .NET Framework 2.0

Andrew Conrad writes about Dataset performance improvements in .NET 2.0. For me these improvements are really, really good reasons to switch to .NET 2.0 as soon as it ships (or even earlier when a ‘Go Live’ license is available).

System.Data.DataSet contains some very significant performance improvements over prior versions – particularly for large result set scenarios.

In particular,

• Highly efficient Binary Remoting --  For large Dataset, orders of magnitude better than v1.x
• Row Insert, Delete and Modify operations – For large Dataset, orders of magnitude better than v1.x. For instance, for a DataTable with PrimaryKey constraint, inserting million rows in random order takes around 45 seconds. Everett took 30 Minutes.
• Maintaining DataViews in sync with underlying DataTable was very expensive in v1.x, In Whidbey it’s extremely fast – orders of magnitude better.
• WebServices/Remoting for TypedDataset: It can be send across to other end without having to send its schema, significantly reducing the serialized payload and giving approx 4x+ improvement in end-end latency.

The following article (in addition to highlighting some new V2 features) also details the performance improvements.