Returning a Dictionary<int, int> or an int[][] on a WCF response

Question

Is it preferable to return a Dictionary<int, int> or an int[][] on a WCF response? Or does it not matter?

Answer 1

They really are two very different things, and serve different purposes.

You'd probably want to return Dictionary<int,int> if you're trying to return a mapping from single integers to other single integer values.

If, however, you are returning multiple "lists" of integer values, then a jagged array would be appropriate. In this case, you'd be return an array of arrays of integers: basically, multiple numerical value collections.