Update Json with more error checking and parsing

[hecon5]

Since the last PR didn't go as expected with a performance hit, I'm trying to track down the performance limiting items.

To do this, I opted to move the thing to a class (for now), which allows for easier default options settings.

As of now, I'm getting a minimum parse time of 3 seconds for the giant vcs-index file with even the original parser, not 0.51s reported by @joyfullservice. I'm not sure what is going on, because it should be considerably faster, so I'm putting it up here for @joyfullservice to hopefully test on his end and see if his results match mine.

[hecon5]

As I test, I decided to fuzz the index you provided @joyfullservice, and write a tool to fuzz one in the future.

This allows us to build huge json files and not have them compromise any data publicly.

A sample:

If you're ok with it, I'd like to put the new testing file in the \testing\ directory.

[joyfullservice]

Here is what I am getting after building from your branch:

--------------------------------------------------
                PERFORMANCE REPORTS
--------------------------------------------------
Category                      Count     Seconds
--------------------------------------------------
TestLoadingFileOld            5         2.7879
TestLoadingFileNew            5         2.7376
TestLoadingFileNew2           5         2.7547
--------------------------------------------------
TOTALS:                       15        8.2802
--------------------------------------------------

--------------------------------------------------
Operations                    Count     Seconds
--------------------------------------------------
Read File                     2         0.0102
Parse JSON                    15        8.1622
--------------------------------------------------
Other Operations                        0.1185
--------------------------------------------------

[hecon5]

Interesting; my mind is BLOWN, because it's a solid 3-5 seconds per loop (15-17) for me on the same code.

[joyfullservice]

I did a little more testing, and noted that you are doing 5 iterations for each of these tests. The 0.5 seconds I was getting on the performance side was for a single iteration of loading JSON content. Here is a comparison after adding in a couple other tests for side-by-side comparison.

--------------------------------------------------
                PERFORMANCE REPORTS
--------------------------------------------------
Category                      Count     Seconds
--------------------------------------------------
TestLoadingFileOld            5         2.7620
TestLoadingFileNew            5         2.6337
TestLoadingFileNew2           5         2.7546
TestLoadingFileOriginal       5         2.7193
AdamsOriginalTest             5         2.8005
--------------------------------------------------
TOTALS:                       25        13.6701
--------------------------------------------------

--------------------------------------------------
Operations                    Count     Seconds
--------------------------------------------------
Read File                     7         0.0509
Parse JSON                    25        13.4363
--------------------------------------------------
Other Operations                        0.1972
--------------------------------------------------

From this, it appears that there is no appreciable performance difference between the different approaches taken. As to the actual performance on my machine, I am running an older i5 (Intel(R) Core(TM) i5-4570 CPU @ 3.20GHz) and the file is located on my Samsung EVO SSD with Rapid Mode on and no disk encryption. (Although we are probably looking at in-memory processing here.)

Hopefully that gives you a little more comparative data for evaluating the performance enhancements. 😄

[hecon5]

Well, after looking into it, I think it may actually be Access's fault on my end.

Intel(R) Xeon(R) E-2276M CPU @ 2.80GHz 2.81 GHz, 32GB Ram, with 1TB SSD.

Access 365, 64bit, Version 2202. And then I found this, which indicates I might have a version susceptible to this... https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/msoffice/forum/all/vba-code-is-very-slow-in-office-365-version-of/e9b7bc57-baa3-4c73-b229-47f0a460ccd8

[hecon5]

After several days of head banging, I will probably end up reverting all the string buffer tooling. However; I've found that if I turn it into a class, it becomes a lot more useful, and can handle automatic property loading (useful in my other project). I'll be cleaning this up shortly.

[hecon5]

@joyfullservice: can you pull this in and see if the new test routine still works on your end? I made some tweaks that help (me) a little bit, but before I roll those into the formal PR, I want to ensure I didn't break anything else.

[hecon5]

@joyfullservice bump