Speed Up Entity Framework Startup
Before your first query against an Entity Framework (EF) model, EF gathers data about your database based on the entities and relationships you've defined to EF; then EF does it again before your first save. If you have lots of entities and relationships in your model, the information-gathering phase can take awhile. Just to make it worse: doubling the number of entities in a model seems to more than double the time in the information-gathering phase. Let's not ask how I know this.
Entity Framework Power Tools can help here by gathering that information at design time, rather than at run time. Depending on how many entities and relationships you have, you can see order of magnitude improvements on your first query and save (literally: reducing the time to execute the first query or save by 10 to 100 times).
To generate this data at design time, first install Power Tools through Visual Studio's Tools | Extension Manager menu choice. With that installed, find the file containing your DbContext object, right-click it, then select Entity Framework | Generate Views. You'll end up with a new file with the same name as your context class file, but with "Views" inserted before the file type (e.g., NorthwindContext.Views.cs). Some caveats: Your DbContext class must have at least one constructor that doesn't require parameters; your project must compile; and your EF classes must be valid (check Visual Studio's Output window for messages from Power Tools if you don't get the Views file).
But nothing is free: If you make a change that affects how your application stores or updates tables either to your database schema or to your model's configuration, your application will blow up because your design time Views code no longer matches the reality of your database. To avoid this, you'll need to test your application when you make a change that might conflict with the code in your Views file. If it turns out that you have a problem, you must regenerate the Views file and redeploy your application. That's a pain, so you'll only want to use this technique if that first query and save is really hurting your performance.
Another option is to not generate the Views file at all. This step is only necessary if you have a lot of tables and relationships in your model, so a better solution is to not have a lot of tables and relationships in your model. Your first step should be to consider ways to limit the size of your EF model (see my earlier tip on bounded models). But if you can't do that and your performance is unacceptable, Views may give you the relief you need.
Posted by Peter Vogel on 05/01/2014