Much of my time is spent working on Sandfield’s Crossfire EDI engine. It is essentially a program similar to Biztalk, which convert files between different formats (e.g. CSV to XML)
Some customers do over over 50,000 conversions in just a working day, so we need to run frequent performance tests to ensure the code is running optimally.
We use a tool called ANTS Performance Profiler, from Redgate which is excellent at identifying slow running functions. Here are 5 easy ways to make your C# application run faster.
1. Use XmlNodeReader over XPath
The XmlNodeReader and XmlTextReader will perform significantly faster than using any XPath expression. It obviously has some limitations, but executed in almost half the time when we made this optimisation.
Slow
Fast
2. Use String.Compare instead of =’s
When doing a case-insensitive compare, the String.Compare function provides far greater performance than using the equals operator and two case modifying functions.
Slow
Fast
3. Avoid many calls to Guid.NewGuid()
A GUID is a very easy way to give an object a unique id, so you would be tempted to use it, but this takes significantly longer than simply assigning a sequential counter.
Slow
Fast
4. Use For instead of ForEach
Using a for loop when not using collections can be up to twice as fast as running the same loop using foreach.
Slow
Fast
There is a great explanation on the differences between for and foreach loops here.
5. Use Release Mode
Something every developer should be doing anyway, our live installations in release mode perform about 20% faster than in debug mode on the same machine.
Hopefully, you find a use for at least one of these in your applications. Happy developing.
