Overview The XmlSerializer is an excellent utility to turn your classes into XML and vice versa very very easily. So long as you aren't using it on dynamically generated types, but are repeatedly on the same types, then the XML serializer is quite performant. However, as great as the XmlSerializer is, I’ve found it a pain to debug. You have 2 choices: Look through the XML and find the invalid field Step through every property in the debugger for your class and find the property that is failing Problem When your XML document gets to the point of having hundreds of elements, this b... [More]

FindControl() is great if you’re looking for a control one level down, but if you’re making a dynamic control with n levels of child controls it can become a pain… Extension Methods to the rescue! Not only does it find the control your looking for at any level in the page, it also used generics to return the control without needing to cast it. /// <summary>/// Finds the control (Recursively) with an ID matching that given, of the Type requested. /// No need to cast either!/// </summary>/// <typeparam name="T">The type of control to return</typeparam>///... [More]

Updated: This article is 2 of the 2 posts about this problem (Problem AND Solution) The answer to this is definitely ... NO! When a colleague looked over my example, we shared some ideas about what LINQ is actually doing. It turns out that my LINQ version was working faster because it wasn't actually doing anything! By design, LINQ defers all processing until the data is actually used. Being assigned as it was wasn't enough! var q = from c in db.Customers where c.City == "London" select c; This only prepares the query, but no executi... [More]

Updated: This article is 1 of the 2 posts about this problem (Problem AND Solution) Today, I looked into using LINQ and SQL together. I read about the CompiledQuery.Compile() method which can speed up queries because of the caching. So I decided to run the queries one by one and view the performance improvement. Unfortuantely, I witnessed that the Compiled version took over 20 times longer to run than the non-compiled. I will ask my Microsoft contacts to clarify this, but in the meantime, if you know why this is, please let me know. Pre-requisites Visual Studio 2008 Add a... [More]