Effective Use of C Sharp Collections Dev 

Are you aware that most developers do not use C# collections effectively? 

The reason is that they don't experience a performance difference unless they manage or manipulate large datasets. 

This document doesn't cover all topics related to C# collections; it only addresses a few collections from both generic and non-generic types.

Introduction

The diagram below shows the namespaces and their supported collections. This document covers the items highlighted in green in the diagram.

Collections allow for dynamic memory allocation for operations such as adding, updating, deleting, searching, and sorting items.

Generic Collection

•  Type Safety: It is strongly typed, ensuring consistent data types within a collection.   Otherwise, we get a compilation error.
•  No boxing is needed
•  There is no data loss due to type mismatch.
•  Deliver better performance

Non-Generic Collection

•   No Type Safety: A collection can store elements of any data type.
•   Boxing might be necessary.
•   There is no guarantee of data availability
•   Data type mismatch can occur at runtime.

 

 Add / Insert Data into a Temporary Collection

This section will demonstrate the performance in milliseconds when a million data elements are inserted into a collection object.

Test Scenarios

Input Data: Int[] intArrayMillionCount = int[1000000]; This integer array will contain both ordered and unordered lists of random numbers to be inserted into various C# collections.

Process: A million pieces of data will be processed five times, and the average time will be recorded. 

Note: The performance measurements may vary depending on the PC configuration.

Managing Ordered Dataset

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Managing Unordered Dataset

Observation

The Dictionary and HashSet collections are ideal for storing temporary data during data manipulation. Conversely, the List collection type can serve as a return type, enabling us to provide data to the client as per their specific requirements.

Calculation Using a Large Temporary Collection

This section will demonstrate the performance in milliseconds when carrying out a task with a million data elements.

Test Scenarios

Input Data: Int[] intArrayMillionCount = int[1000000]; This integer array will contain both ordered and unordered lists of random numbers to be inserted into various C# collections.

Process: Calculate the sum of 1000 elements that are greater than 75,000 from a collection containing one million elements.

Note: The performance measurements may vary depending on the PC configuration.

Observation

When working with a large collection for calculations, it's essential to employ an efficient filtering mechanism. Avoid including exhaustive operations like OrderBy in queries. As demonstrated in the exercise above, ordered lists perform better than unordered lists.

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