Question

we’ve been using a custom made ERP application for more than 4 years, actually there were some bad design issues which affected the performance for the application right now.

in fact the problem is, this application can be classified as heavy-data application, aka business application.

the biggest bad design issues, is that we are getting the whole data for a particular business unit, and assign it for controls, or keep it in memory (like ArrayLists, Generic Lists), and give the user the flexibility of navigation and full application speed response.

in the first 2 years of usage, we didn’t notice the problem, but by the end of that period, we are getting complaints, more and more about the performance of the application.

We were and still using ADO.NET, with stored procedures, which is generated for CRUD operations (Get, List, Delete, Insert, Update SPs), so if we are going to separate each year’s data, we’ve to redesign those auto generated SPs with the required modifications in the data access layer, and with the fact that there were no actual separation in layers, we are not able by easy means to do that modification, so the first upcoming solution is to do some database enhancements to balance this huge data traffic, but the problem raises again for about 6 Months by now.

so we think this is the time to correct our mistakes (very late decision), but how could we do this? we end up with these solutions:

• Use web application rather than windows application, thus we’ll be able to use our server’s full power, and minimizes the traffic for the connection

• Redesign the application so that it takes care of Year Endings, don’t get all data, use better ORM rather than old fusion ADO.NET, but stick in windows forms, and same application

and according to time frame (limited some how), team members (2, both have good experience in windows, web development), I’m not able to take the decision right now, I’m afraid that windows application modifications could take longer time than expected.

can you advice me?

I’m using C# 4.0, ASP.NET web forms, (MVC newbie).

Answer 1

If the database itself is quick, as you’ve indicated in your response to my comment, then, as you have suggested, you must reduce the amount of data populating the DataSet.

Although ADO.NET uses a “disconnected” model, the developer still has control over the select-query that is used to populate each table/relation in the DataSet. A hypothetical example: suppose you had 5000 customers in your CUSTOMERS table in the database. You might populate the CUSTOMERS table in your DataSet like this:

             select * from CUSTOMERS order by customername

or like this:

            select id, customername from CUSTOMERS order by customername

The order-headers table could be populated like this:

            create proc getOrderHeaders4Customer
            @customerid int
            as
            select * from ORDERHEADER where customerid = @customerid

that is, you would need to have a current customer in the GUI before you’d populate the OrderHeaders relation, and you would fetch the order-detail data only when the user clicks on a particular order-header in the GUI. The point is, that ADO.NET can be used to do this — you don’t have to abandon everything in the app in order to be more parsimonious with the disconnected dataset.

How much data would be fetched by the client, and more importantly, when the data are fetched by the client, is completely under developer control regardless of whether it’s Silverlight, WinForms, or ASP.NET. Now, if your ERP application was not efficient, retrofitting efficiency may be difficult. But you don’t have to abandon ADO.NET to achieve efficiency, and simply choosing another data-layer technology will not itself bring you efficiency.