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If you’re a part of the Microsoft or .NET community, then you might already know the answer to this question.
For those who are new to this sort of programming, this quick guide can help you understand c# async await task performance a little better.
It will also show you a few tools to track code and better understand exactly what it is doing.
What Is Async Await?
Async Await in C# is used to make asynchronous programming easier. The newest ASP.NET versions utilize it to improve their performance. Profiling this type of code can be extremely difficult as it jumps across threads.
Normally, you could view a method and all of its child methods right on the same thread, which is a simple process. Async doesn’t work that way, though. Instead, you’ll see something more like this.
First, a parent method starts on one thread. Then, an I/O operation starts, ending the code on that thread. Once the I/0 has been completed, the code will continue to run a new thread, which makes associating that code complicated since it is part of a larger transaction.
Having to do all the work yourself would be a nightmare! Thankfully, async await works diligently on this complicated underlying code so developers can continue to write.
Prefix And Retrace
Many performance monitoring and profiling tools have a tough time visualizing the performance of async C# code, let alone supporting it. Lucky for developers, there are two tools that can make your life easier.
Prefix and Retrace are two tools that make visualizing code less of a nightmare. They offer trace views that allow you to not only track but also understand exactly what your code is up to.
Prefix handles async code while showing how long it took to receive the response headers, and even shows HTTP status code alongside its length of response. This makes your job a whole lot easier right off the bat, solving a few of the issues that lead to tedious work.
Then, there are app insights issues…
Those using Application Insights would see that they track HTTP calls, but label them as Remote Dependencies. This is why many developers choose to use Retrace since App Insights does not support HttpClient. Retrace fixes this issue, without you having to do a thing.
Visualizing The Parallel
For code dealing with multiple things at once, work smart and collect the results at the ends. You can run them in parallel, handling multiple calls at the same time. Simply do an await on the Task, when all to save you time.
Prefix and Retrace excellently support this method, with the process taking one second for each code. So, if your code was working on three aspects of your app at once, it would only take you three seconds to do them all in parallel.
That’s fascinating and helpful enough, but using these programs to their full potential can allow you to handle a very weird mix of operations with ease. Saving that kind of time is crucial to any developer’s work flow.
Summing It All Up
Profiling C# async await code is an extremely complicated task, especially trying to visualize what it is doing. Using Prefix, you can understand exactly what your code is doing and how it performs right from your workstation. Say goodbye to the days of tediously sorting through line after line of code just to view what is going on.
Meanwhile, Retrace provides the same service for your production and non-production apps. Both of these systems work to simplify your duties, which is a much-welcomed relief for developers!
