Size of a dictionary

Question

I am currently designing a website in C#, which uses some very complex code to generate a search list, which I am currently designing as a Tree-like structure.

The main reason I am using a tree is the fact that this website is high-traffic and has a very complex search filter, which means scalability is very important, however I am worried that the memory requirements of the tree may outweigh the effective processing requirements of simply recalculating values every time.

Does anyone know of a reliable way to measure the size of a dictionary in C#? The Marshal.SizeOf() method will not allow this as the code is not unmanaged.

Cheers, Ed

Answer 1

One way to do it ... initialize your tree with an arbitrary number of elements, measure the memory size consumed by the process, add 1000 new elements, measure the memory size again, subtract and divide.

Answer 2

best bet is to run load on the site under different models and check the relevant performance counters.

As a simplification you could extract just the code that creates and stores data structures, and embed that into a console application. Run a simulated load and check the perf counters there. You can vary things and measure the impact on memory consumption and garbage collection. Doing this would isolate the effects you want to measure.

If you're thinking, "gee, that sounds like a lot of work," then you are better off just buying more memory.

Answer 3

You could be to create a small app with a single Dictionary, and then analyze it in several scenarios using WinDbg or ClrProfiler.

I don't think there is a way to get the total size of the object in run-time (apart from raversing internal fields using reflection?)