Bulk Operations
Definition
Bulk operations method gives you additional flexibility by allowing to customize options such as primary key, columns, include childs entities and more.
They are also faster than BulkSaveChanges since they don't use the ChangeTracker and doesn't call the DetectChanges method.
Bulk Operations Available:
- BulkInsert
- BulkUpdate
- BulkDelete
- BulkMerge (UPSERT operation)
- BulkSynchronize
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.
By example:
- Inserting thousands of hundreds of data 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 |