[Mono-dev] Mono.Data.Sqlite performance

[Robert Jordan]

On 27.01.2012 15:54, David A Knight wrote:
> I have been looking at changing an iOS app over to using Monotouch
> and run into an issue with Sqlite performance.  Writing some test
> code (not running on a device) that just opens a database and does a
> number of inserts (in a transaction) the performance difference
> between C (using Core Foundation for unicode strings) and C# is
> massive.  ~37k compared to ~14k inserts per second under MacOSX
> (including the iOS simulator) / Linux.
>
> Looking at Mono.Data.Sqlite I can't see any code that would cause
> this and so have come to the conclusion (wrongly or rightly) that the
> difference in performance is down to Sqlite functions being called
> via P/Invoke and the overhead it causes.  Is there anything that can
> be done to reduce this overhead that isn't already in place?  Am I
> wrong that the difference is caused by the P/Invoke?

It's hard to say w/out a test case.

If you did not specify SqliteConnection's "UseUTF16Encoding=true"
option, the p/invoke layer would have to marshal strings  back and
forth between UTF-8 and UTF-16. This might add substantial overhead
to apps that need 37k transactions per second.

Robert