Entity Framework Extensions Bulk Operations

Definition

Bulk operations methods give you additional flexibility by allowing you to customize options such as primary key, columns, include child entities and more.

They are also faster than BulkSaveChanges since they don't use the ChangeTracker and don't call the DetectChanges method.

Bulk Operations Available:

Bulk Operations Examples

// Easy to use
context.BulkInsert(list);
context.BulkUpdate(list);
context.BulkDelete(list);
context.BulkMerge(list);

// Easy to customize
context.BulkMerge(customers, bulk => bulk.ColumnPrimaryKeyExpression = customer => customer.Code; });

Purpose

Using the ChangeTracker to detect and persist change automatically is great! However, almost every application has some particular scenario which requires some customization and better performance.

For example:

  • Inserting hundreds of thousands of records with child entities
  • Updating only some particular fields
  • Merging a list of customers using the code instead of the key

Performance Comparisons

Operations 1,000 Entities 2,000 Entities 5,000 Entities
SaveChanges 1,000 ms 2,000 ms 5,000 ms
BulkInsert 6 ms 10 ms 15 ms
BulkUpdate 50 ms 55 ms 65 ms
BulkDelete 45 ms 50 ms 60 ms
BulkMerge 65 ms 80 ms 110 ms
Last updated: 2025-06-26
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