Question

I have a page on which data table is created programmatically if the data is not there in the database tables. I have to use this data table in many events during postbacks. The data table may contain hundreds of records and there may be multiple users accessing the same page(Of course with different data source for each user). I am storing the data table in view state but I am afraid that this practice will make the page heavier. Is there any other way to preserve the data table across postbacks.The code is very long so I can not copy and past it here.

Using session will again make the whole application heavier…So is it better choice over viewstate??

Answer 1

In your case the view state can get very big and will hurt page load performance. IMHO the best thing would be to revise the way your are handling the post back events.

• Use Caching if more than one user needs the same data.
• Using the Session if the data is specific for each zuser. But keep in mind, that if you are in a
  clustered invironment it has some pitfalls.
• Load the data from the database each time the user posts back to the server. No Statehandling on the server needs to be done but you loose performance while doing a network roundtrip.

For a quick fix I usually store the View State on the server. Refer to this page to read about it… http://aspguy.wordpress.com/2008/07/09/reducing-the-page-size-by-storing-viewstate-on-server/