Performance, availability, and scalability concerns often take a back seat to application functionality until the end of a development project. However, in Improving .NET Application Performance and Scalability, the authors warn: “Many, if not most, performance problems are introduced by specific architecture, design, and technology choices that you make very early in the development cycle, often in the design stage.” The strategies they recommend for building performance into an application stress the importance of choosing a scalable solution for persistent data access.

Analysts also confirm that data access technology has a significant impact throughout the project lifecycle:
– Development Phase: An R.B. Webber study concluded that coding and configuring data access typically accounts for 30 to 40% of total project effort.
– Tuning Phase: Performance and data integrity issues often do not surface until testing.
– Deployment Phase: According to a 2004 Forrester Research survey, 66% of performance problems are first identified by irate users calling the IT help desk.

Progress ® DataXtend™ CE for C# provides cost effective, scalable, and high performance object oriented access to relational data for Microsoft ® .NET applications. DataXtend CE meets and exceeds data access requirements at each stage of the project lifecycle, ensuring a fast, free flow of data. Tightly integrated features shorten development schedules, simplify performance tuning, and ensure enterprisewide deployment scalability and high availability.

In the previously referenced document, a Microsoft architect strongly suggests that development teams plan up front for performance: “If you’re very lucky, performance problems can be fixed after the fact. But, as often as not, it will take a great deal of effort to get your code to where it needs to be for acceptable performance. This is a very bad trap to fall into.

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