Hi Raymond,
I agree completly with the first part of your message. With the second part
I do not (completly).
Holy cow!! Why would you bring back that much data? First thing I would
do, regardless of what you are trying to do, is find a way to greatly
limit that number of records you are returning somehow. Do your records have a
unique key of some sort? And are they ordered somehow, maybe by the
unique key (that would be prefered)?
DataReaders will perform faster than datasets. DataSets are disconnected
from the database and must store all their information in memory.
DataReaders remain connected to the database and pull records from the
database as you request them (i.e. reader.Read()).
It is not said that DataReaders perform faster than using the dataadapter
which uses also the datareader.
Main thing is that it fixes very efficient the data in memory while with a
datareader you need to do that item by item.
The amount of data with a right selection, as you stated before, can often
be that few, that it is probably often almost the same amount of bytes as
the code needed to retrieve it using a datareader, so that can not be a
point. (and in a modern computer absolute not relevant).
Moreover when readed it the dataset becomes very handy to handle.
Just my thought to give the OP another opinion, while I can think about
situations where your statement is right.
Cor