Read Entire Table

We have a table that represents the index for all of the laws for the state of Missouri. It has roughly 200,000 entries as a linked list. The table is being moved from an AS400 to MSSQL.

As I was updating the DB calls I could see that having the entire table in memory would make things easier.

Much to my surprise I could read the entire table into memory, convert the rows to objects and add them to a list in about 4 seconds. Memory usage topped out at about 200MB.

If I pursue this I understand the obvious issues, but what am I missing? Have you ever done anything similar?

Your opinions matter to me.

I'm surprised that you were surprised:D

Actually, I'm surprised that "the index for all of the laws of the State of Missouri" was that small. 200,000 just doesn't seem large enough, but having that take up 200MB doesn't seem unreasonable. If it works, then that seems like a fine approach. If it was too much memory usage, then you'd be forced to chunk it up, but doing it all in one pass certainly is the easiest design.

It is several thousand pages long.