You’re Opinion on SQLDatasource Performance?

[artificer]

I want to develop a web application that will manage the online
registration and class schedule selection process for a small university
in the Caribbean. The application should support around 50 simultaneous
users to begin with and if the application becomes successful maybe it
will grow up to 500 simultaneous users. The application will have an
interface very similar to the one on the timetraker starter kit.



The logic of the application is not too complex and I have around 8 month
to develop it but I will be the only developer so I was considering using
the SQLDatasource to speed up the development.



I will highly appreciate your opinions on performance? Do you think
SQLDatasource can handle this? If not what do you recommend? Any official
documentation I can read on the subject? By the way the application will
not be hosted on local servers but instead on a Hosting Provider for
economical reasons.



Thanks a lot for your help

 

[Karl Seguin]

SqlDataSource should be avoided. I don't know anything about it's
performance, but the huge penalty you pay in maintainability and proper
architecture simply isn't worth it for a system as you seem to be
describing. I do not like this control and made my dissatisfaction plain to
the MS PM in charge of it. It certainly has it's uses (like building my
dad's webpage in a day), but it's EVIL I tell you...EVIL!!!

Karl


--
MY ASP.Net tutorials
http://www.openmymind.net/ - New and Improved (yes, the popup is
annoying)
http://www.openmymind.net/faq.aspx - unofficial newsgroup FAQ (more to
come!)

 

[Frankie]

My opinion, since you asked, is this:

When it comes to implementing any functionality (including db connectivity),
you have at least two basic options.
1. Use the training wheels provided in Visual Studio.NET. These are the
drag-n-drop data adapters, SQLDatasource, and other wrappers.
2. Write your own code that implements the functionality.

In consideration of #1 above: these sorts of things get you going very
quickly - but will soon get in your way as you are totally limited to the
capabilities (and incapabilities) of the wrapper. I know they are there
primarily for beginners - but my opinion is that it sends beginners off in
the wrong direction - providing the illusion to the beginner that they
understand what's going on when in fact they are dealing with a wrapper for
which the whole point is to *hide* what's actually going on. Eventually the
beginner will typically have to abandon these wrappers and dive into some
code. Yes - some knowledge will be gleaned along the way - but it's a pretty
expensive way to go in terms of time.

In consideration of #2 above: code might at first appear more intimidating
to the beginner. But if the beginner is willing to dive in and give it a
shot, they will learn what is actually going on a lot faster and will likely
complete the project much more quickly -- more quickly because they won't
waste time trying to figure out why the wrapper isn't working as expected
and not really knowing why and eventually abandoning that path in favor of
coding it anyway in the end. Final thought here - coding db connectivity is
really not all that hard - and there are plenty of samples out there.

You say you have 8 months. Why not take a day or two (at the most) to code
the db connectivity. You'd most likely spend way more than that struggling
with the training wheels - and the struggling would likely begin immediately
after drag-n-dropping the db control onto the visual design surface in VS.

Just my opinion - FWIW