Memory, File or Session for ASP.NET Charting Tools

Question

Which storage method should I use when using ASP.NET Charting Tools? I'm currently using memory, because it seems like the most straight-forward and easy to implement option. Is there any reasons I should be aware of why I should choose one of the other options?

The charts generated will be useful only for an overview kind of purpose (checking to see if a data collection is following a certain pattern, as it is being built day by day), and this function won't be used frequently.

Thank-you in advance for any advice you can offer. Jere

Answer 1

Here are my two cents:

• Memory is the easiest, but doesn't scale very well if you are generating a lot of charts or want to scale to multiple servers. With this approach, you are constrained by the amount of available RAM.
• File scales better on a single machine than memory because it uses less RAM, but adds a file system permissions dependency and still doesn't scale very well to multiple servers.
• Session, especially when using, say, SQL Server for session management, scales nicely to multiple servers, but can take much more effort to configure and maintain.