Question

I used bind all GridViews, DetailViews etc. on my page using an ObjectDataSource (unless it wasn’t possible to do so). Recently, I’ve started binding all my contols programatically. I find this a lot cleaner and easier, though some may disagree.

Binding with a ObjectDataSource obviously has it advantages and disadvantages, as does doing it programatically.

Say I bind a GridView programatically (e.g. GridView1.DataSource = SomeList), when I change page on the GridView, I have to also code this. Each time the page changes I have to call GridView1.DataSource = SomeList again. Obviously with a ObjectDataSource I don’t need to do this. I normally stick my SomeList object into the ViewState so when I change page I don’t need to hit the database each and every time.

My question is: Is this how the ObjectDataSource works? Does it store it’s data in the ViewState and not hit the database again unless you call the .Select method? I like to try and get the best performance out of my applications and hit the database as few times as possible but I don’t really like the idea of storing a huge list in the ViewState. Is there a better way of doing this? Is caching per user a good idea (or possible)? Shall I just hit the database everytime instead of storing my huge list in the ViewState? Is it sometimes better to hit the database than to use ViewState?

Answer 1

Does it store it’s data in the ViewState and not hit the database again unless you call the .Select method?

No its not save the data in ViewState. In the view state gridview and other similar lists, saves the General Status, eg the sort column, the page, the total pages, the control state, but not the Data.

Is caching per user a good idea

The caching per user on server side is not so good idea except if the caching is last for few minutes only or/and the data that you going to cache is very small. If you cache per user large amount of data for long time they going to grow too much especial if a user starts to read a lot of pages, that at the end you have the same problem.

Now you have to show a large amount of data that come from the relation of many tables, then maybe is better to cache the full relation of the tables to “one flat table”.

Shall I just hit the database everytime instead of storing my huge list in the ViewState?

This is also depend from how fast you have design the reading of your data. For me is better to keep the ViewState small, and keep there only informations that you need to make the actions on your page, and not data.