Skip to main content

Pre-Generating Views in Entity Framework .NET 4.0

Image
By

 

UPDATED ON: 16/09/2010

If you’re using Entity Framework chances are you’ve come up against performance issues already, especially when instantiating your Object Context.

One very reliable way to increase performance is to pre-generate the Views. Depending on the size of your model and in my experience it can shave as much as 40% off the instantiation time.

There is a good overview on MSDN, however it only covers .NET 3.5.

Step 1

Go to your Model properties and select “Copy to Output Directory” for the Metadata Artifact Processing option.

ef-pre-generate

The result of this is you will end up with the .ssdl, .csdl and .msl files in your output directory which in this case is bin/Debug.

Step 2


Next you need to setup the Pre-build event to use the EDMGen.exe tool.
NB: If you use the Command on the MSDN site you will come across this error.

“The required parameter ‘mode’ is missing”

The correct command to use is: 

"%windir%\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v4.0.30319\EdmGen.exe" /mode:ViewGeneration "/inssdl:$(TargetDir)MyModel.ssdl" "/incsdl:$(TargetDir)MyModel.csdl" "/inmsl:$(TargetDir)MyModel.msl" "/outviews:$(ProjectDir)MyModel.Views.cs" /nologo /language:CSharp

 

Step 3

The .ssdl, .csdl & .msl files will be generated on every build and output to the TargetDir, however it’s a good idea to include them in your Project.

In the Post-build event you can add a simple XCOPY like below to copy the files to the root of your project:

XCOPY "$(TargetDir)MyModel.csdl" "$(ProjectDir)" /R /Y
XCOPY "$(TargetDir)MyModel.ssdl" "$(ProjectDir)" /R /Y
XCOPY "$(TargetDir)MyModel.msl" "$(ProjectDir)" /R /Y

 

Step 4

Build the project which contains your Entity Model.

If it built successfully you should find the following files in the root of your Project folder

  • MyModel.Views.cs
  • MyModel.csdl
  • MyModel.ssdl
  • MyModel.msl

Go ahead and include all these files in your project, Show All Files > Right Click > Include In Project

Step 5

Now for MyModel.csl, MyModel.ssdl, MyModel.msl you want to include these as an embedded resource

For each of the above files select the “Embedded Resource” Build Action in the Properties window.

Step 6

Now it’s time to update your Entity Connection String to use the embedded resources.

Personally I prefer to use fully qualified names for the embedded resources.

e.g. 

res://*/MyNamespace.MyModel.MyModel.csdl 
You should end up with a Connection String looking like below. 
<connectionStrings>
    <add name="MyModel_Entities" connectionString="metadata=res://*/MyNamespace.MyModel.MyModel.csdl|res://*/MyNamespace.MyModel.MyModel.ssdl|res://*/MyNamespace.MyModel.MyModel.msl;provider=System.Data.SqlClient;provider connection string=&quot;Data Source=local;Initial Catalog=MyModelDatabase;Integrated Security=True;MultipleActiveResultSets=True&quot;" providerName="System.Data.EntityClient" />
  </connectionStrings>

If the path to the embedded resource is wrong you can expect to get a System.Data.MetadataException

Unable to load the specified metadata resource.

To be sure what the Resource path is, you can always use the trusty Reflector.

Finished

Enjoy your new found Entity Framework performance.
If you have any problems, don’t hesitate to let me know.

Labels:

Popular posts from this blog

ASP.NET MVC Release Candidate - Upgrade issues - Spec#

By
First of all, great news that the ASP.NET MVC Release Candidate has finally been released.  Full credit to the team for the hard work on this.  You can get the download here  However this is the first time I have had upgrade issues.  Phil Haack has noted some of the issues here   If like me you have lot's of CTP's and Add-Ins then you might experience some pain in Uninstalling MVC Beta on Vista SP1  This is the list of Add-Ins / CTP's I had to uninstall to get it to work  Spec# PEX Resharper 4.1  Sourcelinks ANTS Profiler 4   Can't say I'm too impressed as it wasted over an hour of my time.  As it turned out Spec# turned out to be the offending culprit, it's forgiveable to have issues with a third party product but a Microsoft one? Guess no-one on the ASP.NET team has Spec# installed. 
Read more

Freeing Disk Space on C:\ Windows Server 2008

By Will Beattie
  I just spent the last little while trying to clear space on our servers in order to install .NET 4.5 . Decided to post so my future self can find the information when I next have to do this. I performed all the usual tasks: Deleting any files/folders from C:\windows\temp and C:\Users\%UserName%\AppData\Local\Temp Delete all EventViewer logs Save to another Disk if you want to keep them Remove any unused programs, e.g. Firefox Remove anything in C:\inetpub\logs Remove any file/folders C:\Windows\System32\LogFiles Remove any file/folders from C:\Users\%UserName%\Downloads Remove any file/folders able to be removed from C:\Users\%UserName%\Desktop Remove any file/folders able to be removed from C:\Users\%UserName%\My Documents Stop Windows Update service and remove all files/folders from C:\Windows\SoftwareDistribution Deleting an Event Logs Run COMPCLN.exe Move the Virtual Memory file to another disk However this wasn’t enough & I found the most space was
Read more

Consuming the SSRS ReportExecutionService from a .NET Client

By
  I’ve just finished writing a nice wrapper which internally calls the SSRS ReportExecutionService to generate reports. Whilst it was fairly simple to implement there has been some major changes between 2005 and 2008 and the majority of online and documentation is based on the 2005 implementation. The most important change is that the Report Server and Report Manager are no longer hosted in IIS which will be a welcomed change to Sys Admins but makes the security model and hosting model vastly different. So far I’ve yet to figure out how to allow Anonymous Access, if anyone knows how to do this leave a comment and it will be most appreciated. Getting Started To get started you’ll want to add a service reference to http://localhost/ReportServer_SQL2008/ReportExecution2005.asmx where ReportServer_SQL2008 is the name you configure in the Reporting Services Configuration Manager. The Web Application files are located in C:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\MSRS10.SQL2008\R
Read more