I want to include a table (Events) from another database in my LINQ to SQL class.
How should I format the Data Source of that table?
I have tried with IP.dbo.Events, IP.DatabaseName.dbo.Events and so on, but can not get it to work.
The reason for all this is to select Events that a Client have attended.
I have also tried to have the table in another LINQ to SQL class, but then it complains on the Data Context.
public static IQueryable<Event> ByClientID(this IQueryable<Event> events, int clientID)
{
events = from e in events
from c in new MyDataContext().ClientCourses
where e.EventID == c.CourseID &&
c.ClientID == clientID
select e;
return events;
}
You can only use tables that reside on the same physical SQL Server in two different instances. I did this once as someone had "cleverly" put an application's DB across two database instances.
There is a blog post on it here that may help.
Could you create a view that returns the data from the 2nd database and use this instead? (Not tried this so absolutely no idea if it'll work :)
Obviously this is no good if you need to be saving to the other database too..
Related
I use code first in a web application where I have a form to upload text files and import the data into my database.
Each file may have up to 20.000+ records for import.
To speed things up I preload some entities so not to ask the DbContext every time. Then when I create an object for insert, I do for example:
myNewObject.Category = preloadedCategories.First(p => p.Code == code);
I have read some articles on the web because EF is extremey slow on batch inserts, so what I do is:
first use Configuration.AutoDetectChangesEnabled = false;
then every 1000 records I dispose the object and make a new one.
BUT! since the preloaded entities where loaded from a db context that was disposed, after making a new DbContext, I have a problem with preloadedCategories.First(p => p.Code == code). When I make a SaveChanges(), EF tries to also save the preloadedCategories.First(p => p.Code == code) object and fails.
So how can I achive this? I don't want to aks the DbContext every time to load some (non changing) objects. Is it possible?
thanks
When dealing with a large number of records in EF, a few things will help
As #janhartmann states, use .AsNoTracking()
As you stated, use Configuration.AutoDetectChangesEnabled = false, which will require the next point
Use context.Categories.Entry(category).State = EntityState.Modified to attach a disconnected entity to a context and mark is as modified
Also make check that preloadedCategories is no longer an IQuerable and that the data really is local and not trying to lazy load from the database.
If there are no changes to your Category object and you just want to link your myNewObject to an existing category, you have two options
Set the foreign key on myNewObject instead of the navigation property
Use context.Products.Entry(myNewObject).State = EntitySate.Added instead of context.Products.Add(myNewObject) to avoid it adding the entire graph of navigation properties
Good luck
I have a ef 4 model and I'm using self tracking entities. In this model there is an entity called Organisation. Each Organisation can have many Locations (addresses). If I try to select a single location (so I can delete it), thus:
var location = _container.Locations.FirstOrDefault(l => l.Id == id);
I get an erorr that there is already a data reader open so I cant open another. If I do the following:
var location = _container.Locations.Include("Organisation").FirstOrDefault(l => l.Id == id);
Then it all works just fine.
Using Intellitrace I can see that with the failed query it executes an ADO command to get just the location then does another command to get the location and the organisation.
Is this a bug or something I need to do differently for selftracking entities?
No it is not a bug. This usually happens if you iterate result of one query and in this iteration you execute another query (it can also happen due to lazy loading but lazy loading is not supported with self tracked entities). The simplest solution is simply allowing multiple active data readers (your database must support it). In case of SQL Server 2005 and newer you can simply add to your connection string this part: MultipleActiveResultSets=true;
I'm facing this exception An attempt has been made to Attach or Add an entity that is not new, perhaps having been loaded from another DataContext. This is not supported. when I try to insert a new entity into my Employees table (the master one).
There is a relationship between the master Employees table and the details Orders table, and I'm sure that the relationship between these two tables (and specifically Employee.Orders EntitySet) is the cause of the problem since when I removed the relationship, it returns back to insert into Employees table with no problems.
When I searched for the problem, there was this blog post which I tried to implement but my case is a different than the one in the blog post in these items:
He faces the exception when tries to update (while I try to insert).
The tables architecture is different.
how can I solve this problem?
Here's the insertion code:
Employee emp = new Employee();
emp.Name = empName; // empName is a local variable
// What should I default emp.Orders to?
dc.Employees.InsertOnSubmit(emp);
dc.SubmitChanges();
P.S: My DataContext is defined on class-level in my repository and the exception is being thrown when I call dc.SubmitChanges();. and I didn't Attach any object why does it say that?
Here is an article explaining what you need to do using the Attach and Detach methods:
http://www.codeproject.com/KB/linq/linq-to-sql-detach.aspx
I am guessing it is trying to save something else besides just the employee object or you aren't showing us the full code in your repository. When you instantiate your DataContext object (dc) try setting DeferredLoadingEnabled = false, and ObjectTrackingEnabled = false and see if it works. If it does, try watching the SQL code in SQL Server Profiler and see if it is modifying other objects that may have came from a different context like the message says.
var dc = new MyDataContext()
{
DeferredLoadingEnabled = false,
ObjectTrackingEnabled = false
};
My bet is on the primary key.
Are you sure the primary key is also set on auto increment?
Did you
try changing the name, does it work then?
What happens if you remove
all rows from your DB? can you insert one then?
I have a POCO entity Report with a collection of a related POCO entity Reference. When creating a Report I get an ICollection<int> of ids. I use this collection to query the reference repository to get an ICollection<Reference> like so:
from r in referencesRepository.References
where viewModel.ReferenceIds.Contains(r.Id)
select r
I would like to connect the collection straight to Report like so:
report.References = from r in referencesRepository.References
where viewModel.ReferenceIds.Contains(r.Id)
select r;
This doesn't work because References is an ICollection and the result is an IEnumerable. I can do ToList(), but I think I will then load all of the references into memory. There also is no AddRange() function.
I would like to be able to do this without loading them into memory.
My question is very similar to this one. There, the only solution was to loop through the items and add them one by one. Except in this question the list of references does not come from the database (which seemed to matter). In my case, the collection does come from the database. So I hope that it is somehow possible.
Thanks in advance.
When working with entity framework you must load objects into memory if you want to work with them so basically you can do something like this:
report.References = (from r in referencesRepository.References
where viewModel.ReferenceIds.Contains(r.Id)
select r).ToList();
Other approach is using dummy objects but it can cause other problems. Dummy object is new instance of Reference object which have only Id set to PK of existing object in DB - it will act like that existing object. The problem is that when you add Report object to context you must manually set each instance of Reference in ObjectStateManager to Unchanged state otherwise it will insert it to DB.
report.References = viewModel.ReferenceIds.Select(i => new Reference { Id = i }).ToList();
// later in Report repository
context.Reports.AddObject(report);
foreach (var reference in report.References)
{
context.ObjectStateManager.ChangeObjectState(reference, EntityState.Unchanged);
}
I've got a repository using LINQ for modelling the data that has a whole bunch of functions for getting data out. A very common way of getting data out is for things such as drop down lists. These drop down lists can vary. If we're creating something we usually have a drop down list with all entries of a certain type, which means I need a function available which filters by the type of entity. We also have pages to filter data, the drop down lists only contain entries that currently are used, so I need a filter that requires used entries. This means there are six different queries to get the same type of data out.
The problem with defining a function for each of these is that there'd be six functions at least for every type of output, all in one repository. It gets very large, very quick. Here's something like I was planning to do:
public IEnumerable<Supplier> ListSuppliers(bool areInUse, bool includeAllOption, int contractTypeID)
{
if (areInUse && includeAllOption)
{
}
else if (areInUse)
{
}
else if (includeAllOption)
{
}
}
Although "areInUse" doesn't seem very English friendly, I'm not brilliant with naming. As you can see, logic resides in my data access layer (repository) which isn't friendly. I could define separate functions but as I say, it grows quite quick.
Could anyone recommend a good solution?
NOTE: I use LINQ for entities only, I don't use it to query. Please don't ask, it's a constraint on the system not specified by me. If I had the choice, I'd use LINQ, but I don't unfortunately.
Have your method take a Func<Supplier,bool> which can be used in Where clause so that you can pass it in any type of filter than you would like to construct. You can use a PredicateBuilder to construct arbitrarily complex functions based on boolean operations.
public IEnumerable<Supplier> ListSuppliers( Func<Supplier,bool> filter )
{
return this.DataContext.Suppliers.Where( filter );
}
var filter = PredicateBuilder.False<Supplier>();
filter = filter.Or( s => s.IsInUse ).Or( s => s.ContractTypeID == 3 );
var suppliers = repository.ListSuppliers( filter );
You can implement
IEnumerable<Supplier> GetAllSuppliers() { ... }
end then use LINQ on the returned collection. This will retrieve all suppliers from the database that are then filtered using LINQ.
Assuming you are using LINQ to SQL you can also implement
IQueryable<Supplier> GetAllSuppliers() { ... }
end then use LINQ on the returned collection. This will only retrieve the necessary suppliers from the database when the collection is enumerated. This is very powerful and there are also some limits to the LINQ you can use. However, the biggest problem is that you are able to drill right through your data-access layer and into the database using LINQ.
A query like
var query = from supplier in repository.GetAllSuppliers()
where suppliers.Name.StartsWith("Foo") select supplier;
will map into SQL similar to this when it is enumerated
SELECT ... WHERE Name LIKE 'Foo%'