How do I get the best performance from a Windows/wcf Service in C#?

Question

I'm currently working on a Windows Service that will be handling the acquisition of data from multiple measurement instruments connected via USB to my computer. It will be sending some data to an SQL database but I am also creating another application for the machine to be able to view the data locally in real-time and I'll be dealing with arrays/lists with over 7,000,000 elements in the worst case scenarios.

Currently I'm using WCF with NetNamedPipeBinding for inter-process communication and it works great (I can transfer an array with over 7 million doubles in less than a quarter second). So I don't need answers urgently, but I am curious if there are faster ways of accessing the data in the service quicker or more easily.

I have been thinking of delving into unmanaged memory and having the service return a pointer to the array, or something similar. However I don't want to bother with that if the gains are minimal. It's just that when passing a class (I bet a struct will have less overhead) the performance tanks and I am trying to get a good foundation in case I start dealing with more complex data types.

Service related code

public class testclass
{
    public double dub1 {get;set;}
    public double dub2 {get;set;}
}
public testclass[] GetList(int n)
    {
        sw.Restart();
        testclass[] numbers = new testclass[n];
        for (var i = 0; i < n; i++)
        {
            numbers[i] = new testclass { dub1 = i, dub2 = i };
        }
        numbers[0].dub1 = (double)sw.ElapsedMilliseconds;
        return numbers;
    }
public double[] GetDoubles(int n)
    {
        sw.Restart();
        double[] numbers = new double[n];
        numbers[0] = (double)sw.ElapsedMilliseconds;
        return numbers;
    }

Client Related Code

class Program
{
    static void Main(string[] args)
    {
        while (1 == 1)
        {
            Console.WriteLine("Size of List");
            var number1 = int.Parse(Console.ReadLine());
            var sw = new Stopwatch();

            var test = new ServiceReference1.CalculatorClient();

            sw.Restart();
            var list = test.GetDoubles(number1).ToList();
            Console.WriteLine("Response Time: "+ sw.ElapsedMilliseconds);
            Console.WriteLine("Time to make list: "+list[0]);
        }
    }
}

GetDoubles Performance

GetList Performance

it this a typing error? the `GetList` method loops though the entire array, while the `GetDoubles` makes a single assignment to the first array item — Menahem, Apr 19 '17 at 14:21

score 1 · Answer 1 · answered Apr 19 '17 at 14:11

Im just guessing here but I expect that serialization may be part of the issue, there are two steps to dealing with this (at least). One is to use DTO's to make sure you are only passing what is needed and are using performant data types, the other would be to look at using a different serializer, I have heard of protobuf-net but have never used it.

I know your above example is trivial but if your test class could create a byte array DTO and accept one as a constructor on the client side you might have a pattern that helps.

Thanks, and sorry for the late response. I've been busy on another unrelated project but when I come back to this one I'll take a look at DTO's and let you know how it turns out. — Mark, May 16 '17 at 22:09

How do I get the best performance from a Windows/wcf Service in C#?

GetDoubles Performance

GetList Performance

1 Answers1