What is the best way to sort a data table in ADO.NET

Question

What is the best for sorting a data table in c#, both from a performance and a code-readability point-of-view:

personsDT.OrderBy(person => person.PersonName);

or:

personsDT.DefaultView.Sort = "PersonName ASC";

The personsDT is build from a SharePoint list, so it is impossible to use SQL (I am aware that an ORDER BY claude in a SQL SELECT statement would be the best way). Considering the performance, I am worried that the OrderBy<> clause might be slower than the Sort in the data view. Are you aware of such performance implications?

Answer 1

What's the purpose for the question? Performance is almost certainly a non-issue; if not, you'll need to test it in your context. I think if you are specifying a sort for a SQL statement it should be in the SQL statement; and I prefer to avoid constructing SQL statements stringwise if possible. Which do you like better esthetically?

Answer 2

I'll prefer the first option.

1) For code the readability point-of-view i think that Lambda is clearer than the second one.

2) In the first case you are using a strongly type way to sort your entity which is good.

3) On the second case you are passing the field and the order in a string mmmm dont like it.

Go Lambdas!!!

Regards!

Answer 3

Well, if performance is very important, sort it on the SQL DB before getting the data.

Answer 4

To throw my 2c into the pot:

Coming from an sql background, I personally find the sql way more intuitive - but that's no reason to follow it. The lambda method has several good recommendations for it:

As MRFerocius (is the missing 'o' intentional?) points out - the lambda method is strongly typed. That's a good thing.

And then there's this - if your sorting criteria should ever become more complicated, the lambda method would allow you to tack on additional and esoteric conditions that the sql method would not.

Performance-wise, they should be about equal, for a simple condition like this.