.NET 3.5 optimizations after converting from 2.0 to 3.5

Question

I converted our project from .NET 2.0 to 3.5 and am looking for optimizations that can be done utilizing 3.5 framework. What are some of the things I can do with 3.5 as in Datastructures. Also any suggestions in using DataAccess apart from LINQ to SQL. Any suggestions/pointers would be great. I am not looking at any specific optimization, just a general . I am also using VB.NET :(

Answer 1

I'm not entirely sure what you mean by optimizations. Can you clarify a bit?

The 3.5 framework and the corresponding VB.Net compiler was not so much about optimization but much more about the concepts surrounding LINQ (language integrated query). It's a way of defining a generic query language, somewhat resembling SQL, that can be used on a variety of different sources.

For instance, lets say you had a list of Students and wanted to grab the ones which had a particular name. Prior to LINQ you'd write something like the following

Dim list As New List<Student>()
For Each cur in col
  if cur.Name = SomeName Then
    list.Add(cur)
  End If
Next

LINQ greatly simplifies this by letting you write the following

Dim result = From cur in col Where cur.Name = SomeName

Answer 2

This link pretty much gives you all of the new VB 9.0 features at a glance:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms364068.aspx

• Implicitly Typed Local Variables
• Object and Array Initializers
• Anonymous Types
• Deep XML Support
• Query Comprehensions Extension
• Methods and Lambda Expressions
• Nullable Types
• Relaxed Delegates

Answer 3

VB 9 has a cool XML primitive type that lets you do:

Dim book As XElement = _
    <book category="fiction" isbn=<%= isbnNumber %>>
        <modifiedDate><%= modifiedDate %></modifiedDate>
    </book>

Which is pretty cool! (code taken from msdn)

Answer 4

If you're using remoting or serialization in 2.0 you can switch it over to WCF remoting/serialization now and from what I've read you'll see nice performance increases.