Reading Web.config Many times and performance

Question

If i am reading one of my application settings from the web.config everytime when each of my ASP.NET page loads,Would it be a performance issue ?I m concerned about memory too.

Answer 1

I don't think I'd worry about it. It is a very small file, and reading from it is very fast. If it concerns you that much, read it into an Application variable, and reference that throughout the app instead.

Answer 2

It's not great, but in the context of serving up a page, it's just a drop in the bucket. It's not nearly as bad as reading it over and over in a loop, hundreds of times per page view. Lots of pages do things like look up previous visit info (user preferences, cookie tracking, etc..) which usually requires opening a database connection and running a query. So hitting the config file is small potatoes.

You also have to consider how often this really happens. A thousand times per hour? Don't waste your time. A thousand per minute? Stil probably not a problem (a datbase query would probably be a different story though). A thousand times per second, and then you've got reason to try to optomize this.