Hi there,
From your point of view: is there a type of data source that you would suggest when populating the LINQ reporting engine under C# .NET? Would I be better of using my own object structure or would you suggest to use an XML/JSON data structure? I wonder how those data source types compare regarding performance and featurewise.
Many thanks.
BR,
Dani
The answer depends on a particular scenario and preferences.
Using of objects directly enables to access type members other than properties (for example, methods and indexers), which provides more flexibility in general.
On the other hand, using JSON/XML data sources, one can seamlessly limit the amount of data and abilities they expose to a template author, which can make sense if the author is not themself. As a note, this limitation can be implemented using plain objects as well if it is OK from the standpoint of a system architecture.
Regarding performance, in general, using of plain objects (especially, with reflection optimization turned on) is faster, because there is no need to spend processing resources on serialization and deserialization then. However, the difference is typically unnoticeable, unless working with large collections of data. But only trying the both for a particular scenario can answer the question how big an overhead of serialization/deserialization exactly is.
Hi Ivan
Many thanks for your prompt reply. Since we already have an object structure, It seems to be a good idea to use that as a data source.
BR,
Dani