Code Performance Contest in VB .Net

**Explanation of Code Performance Contest** I am going to select up to five different coders for this project. If you are selected, you will be paid for your work on this project. Whichever coder can produce the best performance in their solution will also receive a $100-$150 bonus, depending on how well their app performs. I am doing this bonus as a way of providing a competition, in order to motivate each of the coders I select to do the best work possible on this project. **Explanation of Project** I need a VB .Net program that can read in more than 5 million records from 31 text files, and store the records in memory so that lookups can be quickly performed against the data. I am currently reading in the records and storing them in a hash table. When the 5+ million records are being read in from text files, not all of them will be added to the hash table. Updates to the hash table will be performed for many of the records that are read. Updates are based on the bar code field that is read in from the text file. If the bar code already exists in the hash table, the other data related to the bar code is updated. If the bar code does not exist in the hash table, the bar code and all the related data is added. I want some of you top coders to determine if this is the fastest way to implement this, or if there are better ways to do the following: • Load more than 5 million records into memory • Be able to quickly update a record • Be able to quickly locate a record and retrieve all of the data for the record **More information about this project is in the document attached to this bid request** ## Deliverables The text files that contain the data for this project can be downloaded at: [login to view URL] Additional requirements, and my sample solution are attached to this bid request.