I'm creating a custom DataSet and I'm under some constrains:
I want the user
to specify the type of the data which they want
to store.
I want
to reduce type-casting because I think it will be VERY expensive.
I will use the data VERY frequently in my application.
I don't know what type of data will be stored in the DataSet, so my initial idea was
to make it a List of objects, but I suspect that the frequent use of the data and the need
to type-cast will be very expensive.
The basic idea is this:
class DataSet : IDataSet
{
private Dictionary<string, List<Object>> _data;
/// <summary>
/// Constructs the data set given the user-specified labels.
/// </summary>
/// <param name="labels">
/// The labels of each column in the data set.
/// </param>
public DataSet(List<string> labels)
{
_data = new Dictionary<string, List<object>>();
foreach (string label in labels)
{
_data.Add(label, new List<object>());
}
}
#region IDataSet Members
public List<string> DataLabels
{
get { return _data.Keys.ToList(); }
}
public int Count
{
get { _data[_data.Keys[0]].Count; }
}
public List<object> GetValues(string label)
{
return _data[label];
}
public
object GetValue(string label, int index)
{
return _data[label][index];
}
public void InsertValue(string label,
object value)
{
_data[label].Insert(0, value);
}
public void AddValue(string label,
object value)
{
_data[label].Add(value);
}
#endregion
}
A concrete example where the DataSet will be used is
to store data obtained from a CSV file where the first column contains the labels. When the data is being loaded from the CSV file I'd like
to specify the type rather than casting
to object. The data could contain columns such as dates, numbers, strings, etc. Here is what it could look like:
"Date","Song","Rating","AvgRating","User"
"02/03/2010","Code Monkey",4.6,4.1,"joe"
"05/27/2009","Code Monkey",1.2,4.5,"jill"
The data will be used in a Machine Learning/Artificial Intelligence algorithm, so it is essential that I make the reading of data very fast. I want
to eliminate type-casting as much as possible, since I can't afford
to cast from '
object'
to whatever data type is needed on every read.
I've seen applications that allow the user
to pick the specific data type for each item in the csv file, so I'm trying
to make a similar solution where a different type can be specified for each column. I want
to create a generic solution so I don't have
to return a List<object> but a List<DateTime> (if it's a DateTime column) or List<double> (if it's a column of doubles).
Is there any way that this can be achieved? Perhaps my approach is wrong, is there a better approach
to this problem?
