Thanks, what I ended up doing was use the ObjectDataSource instead of SqlDataSource, this seems to be pretty significant as it adds a DLA (Data Access Layer) to the application.
http://www.c-sharpcorner.com/UploadFile/6897bc/using-objectdatasource-control-and-its-advantage-over-sqldat/[
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Also ended up publishing the website and it seems to run significantly faster than in debug, which made me look into Visual Studio settings to make some changes so the debugger runs faster...
I am still interested in further optimizations to the way data is being accessed, but I will have to do this at a later date.
Thanks,
Shirzad