This article is part of the series An Exercise in Performance Tuning in C#.Net.

As I look at the code I now have, I wonder if the fileLines variable is an unnecessary intermediate step. Can I rewrite so that stream.ReadLine() is passed directly into the parsing? If I do so, I'll be leaving the file open longer, but since no other application should be attempting to access the file, I'm okay with that. This means moving the open file command into MyClass.ProcessFile().

This article is part of the series An Exercise in Performance Tuning in C#.Net.

It's time to stop ignoring the 800 pound gorilla in the room: System.String. Scrolling all the way over in the Allocation Graph, it is clear that strings take up most of the memory, and it seems logical that most of that comes from the input file.

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I don't often have cause to use threading. In fact, I've found that it sometimes gums up the works (perhaps because I don't understand it well enough?) — slows things down. But when I do want to do some threading in C#, here are a few pages I find helpful in reminding myself how to perform various functions:

• Multi-threading in .NET: Introduction and suggestions
• Threading in C# - Free E-book
• MSDN's Threading Tutorial

Problem​

"Failed to create component" error pops up when dragging a custom Windows Forms control from the Toolbox onto a form. Offending line: foreach (Attribute att in Assembly.GetEntryAssembly().GetCustomAttributes(true)).

Background​

I have started building a custom DLL containing items for re-use between different Windows Forms projects. An obvious candidate is an About window. I created this as a custom control in the DLL project; the control contains a textbox, which I want to fill with the application name, the version, copyright information, and company name. All of this is to come from the AssemblyInfo.cs file, using System.Reflection where necessary:

This article is part of the series An Exercise in Performance Tuning in C#.Net.

At this point I did not re-run the profiler but continued investigating memory allocation. Here's an interesting looking result:

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Problem​

in Visual Studio's debugger, you've landed on an Exception statement. You look at the stack trace but it just points back to a custom exception class you've created. But you know that code is good, it can't be throwing the error. What's going on here?

Solution​

this is an easy mistake to make. I've run it across it in code from a number of people, and recall making the mistake myself at one point. The problem is most likely due to nested throws to a new custom exception.

This is not part of my series on performance tuning a specific app.

Problem​

I have a Registry class in which I want to place a generic collection of objects. In this way I can add new items to the registry on the fly (i.e. from a user application), without having to recompile the library containing the the class. What is my best option, in terms of performance, for a .Net 2.0 collection to hold my mixed-bag of objects? I'll be referring to these with a string name.

This article is part of the series An Exercise in Performance Tuning in C#.Net.

Where else could I improve performance? I thought I should inspect the memory usage and garbage collection. For that I found a great little tool from Microsoft, the CLR Profiler, which I found through the MSDN Patterns & Practices series of guides on application performance and scalability. The specific article that I found most helpful was How To: Use CLR Profiler.

This article is part of the series An Exercise in Performance Tuning in C#.Net.

The application I was working on makes a number of calls to a remote server to perform operations. These calls are made through a proprietary API implemented in .Net. Speaking with the vendor, I discovered two really dumb mistakes that were killing our performance.

Situation: We have a stored procedure running a query whose WHERE clause is given as a parameter. No, that's not the problem in and of itself, at least not today. (Treat this as a non-negotiable requirement for now). Within that WHERE clause there might be a query against a field, call it myField. This field is a varchar and wildcards are not used. Platform: SQL Server 2005.

Problem​

myField has been changed to a varbinary field and holds an encrypted value — thus can no longer query directly against it. How do we make this work?