What's New in EF Core 5
Last updated
Last updated
EF Core 5.0 is currently in development, and here is the list of all the interesting changes introduced so far in each preview.
The simple logging feature adds functionality similar to Database.Log
in EF6 by providing a simple way to get logs from EF Core without the need to configure any kind of external logging framework.
EF Core 5.0 introduces the ToQueryString
extension method, which will return the SQL that EF Core will generate when executing a LINQ query.
An entity type can now be configured as having no key using the new KeylessAttribute
.
It is now easier to create a DbContext
instance without any connection or connection string.
The connection or connection string can now be mutated on the context instance.
This feature allows the same context instance to dynamically connect to different databases.
EF Core can now generate runtime proxies that automatically implement INotifyPropertyChanging
and INotifyPropertyChanged
.
These then report value changes on entity properties directly to EF Core, avoiding the need to scan for changes.
However, proxies come with their own set of limitations, so they are not for everyone.
Debug views are an easy way to look at the internals of EF Core when debugging issues. A debug view for the Model was implemented some time ago. For EF Core 5.0, we have made the model view easier to read and added a new debug view for tracked entities in the state manager.
Relational databases typically treat NULL as an unknown value and therefore not equal to any other NULL.
While C# treats null as a defined value, which compares equal to any other null.
EF Core by default translates queries so that they use C# null semantics. EF Core 5.0 greatly improves the efficiency of these translations.
EF Core 5.0 supports the mapping of C# indexer properties. These properties allow entities to act as property bags where columns are mapped to named properties in the bag.
EF Core 5.0 migrations can now generate CHECK
constraints for enum
property mappings.
A new IsRelational
method has been added in addition to the existing IsSqlServer
, IsSqlite
and IsInMemory
. This method can be used to test if the DbContext is using any relational database provider.
The Azure Cosmos DB database provider now supports optimistic concurrency using ETags
. Use the model builder in OnModelCreating
to configure an ETag
.
The SaveChanges
will then throw a DbUpdateConcurrencyException
on a concurrency conflict, which can be handled to implement retries, etc.
Queries containing new DateTime
construction is now translated.
Also, the following SQL Server functions are now mapped:
DateDiffWeek
DateFromParts
For example:
Queries using Contains
, Length
, SequenceEqual
, etc. on byte[]
properties are now translated to SQL.
Queries using Reverse
are now translated.
Queries using bit-wise operators are now translated in more cases.
Queries that use the string methods such as, Contains
, StartsWith
, and EndsWith
are now translated when using the Azure Cosmos DB provider.
A C# attribute can now be used to specify the backing field for a property. This attribute allows EF Core to still write to and read from the backing field as would normally happen, even when the backing field cannot be found automatically.
EF Core uses a discriminator column for TPH mapping of an inheritance hierarchy.
Some performance enhancements are possible as long as EF Core knows all possible values for the discriminator.
EF Core 5.0 now implements these enhancements.
For example, previous versions of EF Core would always generate this SQL for a query returning all types in a hierarchy.
EF Core 5.0 will now generate the following when a complete discriminator mapping is configured
It will be the default behavior starting with preview 3.
The following two performances improvements are made for SQLite:
Retrieving binary and string data with GetBytes
, GetChars
, and GetTextReader
is now more efficient by making use of SqliteBlob and streams.
The initialization of SqliteConnection
is now lazy.
These improvements are in the ADO.NET Microsoft.Data.Sqlite
provider and hence also improve performance outside of EF Core.
The Include
method now supports filtering of the entities included.
This query will return blogs together with each associated post, but only when the post title contains "Cheese".
Skip and Take can also be used to reduce the number of included entities.
This query will return blogs with at most five posts included on each blog.
Navigation properties are primarily configured when defining relationships. However, the new Navigation
method can be used in cases where navigation properties need an additional configuration. For example, to set a backing field for the navigation when the field would not be found by convention.
Note that the Navigation
API does not replace relationship configuration. Instead, it allows additional configuration of navigation properties in already discovered or defined relationships.
Migrations and scaffolding now allow namespaces to be specified on the command line. For example, to reverse engineer a database putting the context and model classes in different namespaces.
Also, a connection string can now be passed to the database-update
command.
Equivalent parameters have also been added to the PowerShell commands used in the VS Package Manager Console.
For performance reasons, EF doesn't do additional null-checks when reading values from the database. This can result in exceptions that are hard to root-cause when an unexpected null is encountered.
Using EnableDetailedErrors
will add extra null checking to queries such that, for a small performance overhead, these errors are easier to trace back to a root cause.
The partition key to use for a given query can now be specified in the query.
This can be accessed using the new EF.Functions.DataLength
method.
Precision and scale for a property can now be specified using the model builder.
Precision and scale can still be set via the full database type, such as "decimal(16,4)".
The fill factor can now be specified when creating an index on SQL Server. For example.
The default collation for a database can now be specified in the EF model. It will flow through to generated migrations to set the collation when the database is created.
When you create migrations then it generates the following to create the database on SQL Server.
You can also specify the collation to use for specific database columns.
For those not using migrations, collations are now reverse-engineered from the database when scaffolding a DbContext
.
Finally, the EF.Functions.Collate()
allows for ad-hoc queries using different collations.
This will generate the following query for SQL Server.
The ad-hoc collations should be used with care as they can negatively impact database performance.
Arguments now flow from the command line into the CreateDbContext
method of IDesignTimeDbContextFactory
. For example, to indicate this is a dev build, a custom argument (e.g. dev
) can be passed on the command line.
This argument will then flow into the factory, where it can be used to control how the context is created and initialized.
No-tracking queries can now be configured to perform identity resolution. For example, the following query will create a new Blog instance for each Post, even if each Blog has the same primary key.
However, at the expense of usually being slightly slower and always using more memory, this query can be changed to ensure only a single Blog instance is created.
It is only useful for no-tracking queries since all tracking queries already exhibit this behavior. Also, following the API review, the PerformIdentityResolution
the syntax will be changed.
Most databases allow computed column values to be stored after computation.
The computed column is calculated only once on the update, instead of each time its value is retrieved it takes up disk space.
This also allows the column to be indexed for some databases.
EF Core 5.0 allows computed columns to be configured as stored.
SQLite computed columns
EF Core now supports computed columns in SQLite databases.
Starting with EF Core 3.0, EF Core always generates a single SQL query for each LINQ query.
It ensures consistency of the data returned within the constraints of the transaction mode in use.
However, it can become very slow when the query uses Include
or a projection to bring back multiple related collections.
EF Core 5.0 now allows a single LINQ query including related collections to be split into multiple SQL queries.
It can significantly improve performance but can result in inconsistency in the results returned if the data changes between the two queries.
The serializable or snapshot transactions can be used to mitigate this and achieve consistency with split queries, but that may bring other performance costs and behavioral differences.
Split queries with Include
For example, consider a query that pulls in two levels of related collections using Include
method.
By default, EF Core will generate the following SQL when using the SQLite provider.
The new AsSplitQuery
API can be used to change this behavior.
The AsSplitQuery
is available for all relational database providers and can be used anywhere in the query, just like AsNoTracking
. EF Core will now generate the following three SQL queries.
All operations on the query root are supported including OrderBy
, Skip
, Take
, Join
, FirstOrDefault
and similar single result selecting operations.
The filtered Includes with OrderBy
, Skip
, Take
are not supported in preview 6, but are available in the daily builds and will be included in preview 7.
Split queries with collection projections
The AsSplitQuery
method can also be used when collections are loaded in projections.
The above LINQ query generates the following two SQL queries when using the SQLite provider
Only materialization of the collection is supported. Any composition after e.Albums
in the above case won't result in a split query.
The new IndexAttribute
can be placed on an entity type to specify an index for a single column.
For SQL Server, Migrations will then generate the following SQL.
IndexAttribute can also be used to specify an index spanning multiple columns.
For SQL Server, the result is as shown below.
We are continuing to improve the exception messages generated when query translation fails. For example, this query uses the IsSigned
unmapped property.
EF Core will throw the following exception indicating that translation failed because IsSigned
is not mapped.
Similarly, better exception messages are now generated when attempting to translate string comparisons with culture-dependent semantics. For example, the following query attempts to use StringComparison.CurrentCulture
.
EF Core will now throw the following exception.
EF Core exposes a transaction ID for the correlation of transactions across calls.
This ID is typically set by EF Core when a transaction is started.
If the application starts the transaction instead, then this feature allows the application to explicitly set the transaction ID so it is correlated correctly everywhere it is used.
The standard .NET IPAddress
class is now automatically mapped to a string column for databases that do not already have native support. For example, consider mapping this entity type.
On SQL Server, the migration will create the following table.
Entities can then be added in the normal way.
And the resulting SQL will insert the normalized IPv4 or IPv6 address.
When a DbContext
is scaffolded from an existing database, EF Core by default creates an OnConfiguring
overload with a connection string so that the context is immediately usable. However, this is not useful if you already have a partial class with OnConfiguring
, or if you are configuring the context some other way.
To address this, the scaffolding commands can now be instructed to omit the generation of OnConfiguring
.
Or in the Package Manager Console.
The FirstOrDefault
and similar operators for characters in strings are now translated in a LINQ query.
It will be translated to the following SQL when using SQL Server.
EF Core now generates better queries with CASE blocks. Let's consider the following LINQ query.
Previously, the above LINQ would be translated to the following query on SQL Server.
But it is now translated to the following query.
EF Core 5.0 introduces AddDbContextFactory
and AddPooledDbContextFactory
to register a factory for creating DbContext
instances in the application's dependency injection container.
Application services such as ASP.NET Core controllers can then depend on IDbContextFactory<TContext>
in the service constructor.
DbContext
instances can then be created and used as needed.
The DbContext
instances created in this way are not managed by the application's service provider and therefore must be disposed of by the application.
This decoupling is very useful for Blazor applications, where using IDbContextFactory
is recommended, but may also be useful in other scenarios.
DbContext instances can be pooled by calling AddPooledDbContextFactory
.
This pooling works the same way as for AddDbContextPool
, and also has the same limitations.
EF Core 5.0 introduces ChangeTracker.Clear()
which clears the DbContext
of all tracked entities.
This should usually not be needed when using the best practice of creating a new, short-lived context instance for each unit-of-work.
However, if there is a need to reset the state of a DbContext
instance, then using the new Clear()
method is more performant and robust than mass-detaching all entities.
EF Core allows an explicit value to be set for a column that may also have default value constraints.
EF Core uses the CLR default of type property type as a sentinel for this; if the value is not the CLR default, then it is inserted, otherwise, the database default is used.
This creates problems for types where the CLR default is not a good sentinel--most notably, bool
properties.
EF Core 5.0 now allows the backing field to be nullable for cases like this.
The backing field is nullable, but the publicly exposed property is not.
It allows the sentinel value to be null
without impacting the public surface of the entity type.
In this case, if the IsValid
is never set, then the database default will be used since the backing field remains null.
If either true
or false
are set, then this value is saved explicitly to the database.
EF Core allows the Cosmos partition key is included in the EF model.
Starting with preview 7, the partition key is included in the entity type's PK and is used to improved performance in some queries.
EF Core 5.0 improves the configuration of Cosmos and Cosmos connections.
Previously, EF Core required the end-point and key to be specified explicitly when connecting to a Cosmos database.
EF Core 5.0 allows the use of a connection string instead.
In addition, EF Core 5.0 allows the WebProxy instance to be explicitly set.
Many other timeout values, limits, etc. can now also be configured.
Finally, the default connection mode is now ConnectionMode.Gateway
, which is generally more compatible.
Previously when scaffolding a DbContext from an existing database, EF Core will create entity type names that match the table names in the database. For example, tables People
and Addresses
resulted in entity types named People
and Addresses
.
Savepoints can be manually created, released, and rolled back.
In addition, EF Core will now roll back to the last savepoint when executing SaveChanges
fails. This allows SaveChanges to be re-tried without re-trying the entire transaction.
By default, EF Core maps an inheritance hierarchy of .NET types to a single database table. This is known as table-per-hierarchy (TPH) mapping. EF Core 5.0 also allows mapping each .NET type in an inheritance hierarchy to a different database table; known as table-per-type (TPT) mapping.
For example, consider this model with a mapped hierarchy.
By default, EF Core will map this to a single table.
However, mapping each entity type to a different table will instead result in one table per type.
The creation of the foreign key constraints shown above was added after branching the code for preview 8.
Entity types can be mapped to different tables using mapping attributes.
Or using ModelBuilder
configuration.
Compared to other databases SQLite is relatively limited in its schema manipulation capabilities. For example, dropping a column from an existing table requires that the entire table be dropped and re-created. EF Core 5.0 Migrations now supports automatic rebuilding of the table for schema changes that require it.
For example, imagine we have a Unicorns
table created for a Unicorn
entity type.
It will translate to the following SQL.
We then learn that storing the age of a unicorn is considered very rude, so let's remove that property, add a new migration, and update the database. This update will fail when using EF Core 3.1 because the column cannot be dropped. In EF Core 5.0, Migrations will instead rebuild the table.
A temporary table is created with the desired schema for the new table
Data is copied from the current table into the temporary table
Foreign key enforcement is switched off
The current table is dropped
The temporary table is renamed to be the new table
EF Core 5.0 includes first-class support for mapping .NET methods to table-valued functions (TVFs). These functions can then be used in LINQ queries where additional composition on the results of the function will also be translated to SQL.
For example, consider this TVF defined in a SQL Server database.
The EF Core model requires two entity types to use this TVF:
An Employee
type that maps to the Employees table in the normal way
A Report
type that matches the shape returned by the TVF
These types must be included in the EF Core model.
As you can see that the Report
has no primary key and so must be configured as such.
Finally, a .NET method must be mapped to the TVF in the database. This method can be defined on the DbContext using the new FromExpression
method.
This method uses a parameter and return type that matches the TVF defined above. The method is then added to the EF Core model in OnModelCreating.
Using a lambda here is an easy way to pass the MethodInfo
to EF Core. The arguments passed to the method are ignored.
We can now write queries that call GetReports
and compose over the results.
On SQL Server, it translates to the following SQL
The SQL is rooted in the Employees
table, calls GetReports
, and then adds an additional WHERE
clause on the results of the function.
EF Core 5.0 allows mapping the same entity type to different database objects. These objects may be tables, views, or functions.
For example, an entity type can be mapped to both a database view and a database table.
By default, EF Core will then query from the view and send updates to the table. For example, executing the following code.
Results in a query against the view, and then an update to the table.
The split queries can now be configured as the default for any query executed by the DbContext. This configuration is only available for relational providers, and so must be specified as part of the UseProvider
configuration.
EF Core 5.0 supports many-to-many relationships without explicitly mapping the join table.
For example, consider these entity types.
As you can see that the Post
class contains a collection of Tags
, and Tag
class contains a collection of Posts
. EF Core 5.0 recognizes this as a many-to-many relationship by convention. This means no code is required in OnModelCreating
.
When Migrations or EnsureCreated
are used to create the database, EF Core will automatically create the join table. On SQL Server, it will translate to this model.
Creating and associating Tag
and Post
entities will result in join table updates happening automatically.
After inserting the Posts
and Tags
, EF will then automatically create rows in the join table. For example, on SQL Server.
For queries, Include
and other query operations work just like for any other relationship.
The SQL generated uses the join table automatically to bring back all related Tags
.
Unlike EF6, EF Core allows full customization of the join table. For example, the code below configures a many-to-many relationship that also has navigations to the join entity, and in which the join entity contains a payload property.
The support for scaffolding many-to-many relationships from the database is not yet added.
Entity types are commonly mapped to tables or views such that EF Core will pull back the contents of the table or view when querying for that type.
EF Core 5.0 allows an entity type to be mapped to a defining query.
This was partially supported in previous versions, but is much improved and has different syntax in EF Core 5.0
For example, consider two tables; one with modern posts; the other with legacy posts. The modern posts table has some additional columns, but for our application we want both modern and legacy posts to be combined and mapped to an entity type with all necessary properties.
In EF Core 5.0, ToSqlQuery
can be used to map this entity type to a query that pulls and combines rows from both tables.
The legacy_posts
table does not have a Category
column, so we instead synthesize a default value for all legacy posts.
This entity type can then be used in the normal way for LINQ queries as shown below.
Generates the following SQL on SQLite.
The query configured for the entity type is used as a starting for composing the full LINQ query.
The .NET event counters are a way to efficiently expose performance metrics from an application. EF Core 5.0 includes event counters under the Microsoft.EntityFrameworkCore
category.
This tells dotnet counters to start collecting EF Core events for process 49496. This generates output like this in the console.
EF Core 5.0 allows the same CLR type to be mapped to multiple different entity types. Such types are known as shared-type entity types. This feature combined with indexer properties (included in preview 1) allows property bags to be used as the entity type.
For example, the DbContext
below configures the BCL type Dictionary<string, object>
as a shared-type entity type for both products and categories.
Dictionary objects ("property bags") can now be added to the context as entity instances and saved.
These entities can then be queried and updated in the normal way.
EF Core 5.0 introduces both .NET events and an EF Core interceptor triggered when SaveChanges
is called.
The events are simple to use as shown below.
The event sender
is the DbContext
instance.
The args
for the SavedChanges
event contains the number of entities saved to the database.
The interceptor is defined by ISaveChangesInterceptor
, but it is often convenient to inherit from SaveChangesInterceptor
to avoid implementing every method.
The interceptor has both sync and async methods. This can be useful if you need to perform async I/O, such as writing to an audit server.
The interceptor allows SaveChanges
being skipped using the InterceptionResult
mechanism common to all interceptors.
The downside of interceptors is that they must be registered on the DbContext when it is being constructed.
In contrast, the events can be registered on the DbContext
instance at any time.
For example, a User
type may be needed by both an authorization context and a reporting context. If a change is made to the User
type, then migrations for both DbContexts will attempt to update the database. To prevent this, the model for one of the contexts can be configured to exclude the table from its migrations.
In the code below, the AuthorizationContext
will generate migrations for changes to the Users
table, but the ReportingContext
will not, preventing the migrations from clashing.
In EF Core 3.1, the dependent end of a one-to-one relationship was always considered optional. This was most apparent when using owned entities. For example, consider the following model.
Here is the configuration for the above model.
Migrations will create the following table for SQLite.
As you can see that all the columns are nullable, even though some of the HomeAddress
properties have been configured as required. Also, when querying for a Person
, if all the columns for either the home or work address are null, then EF Core will leave the HomeAddress
and/or WorkAddress
properties as null, rather than setting an empty instance of Address
.
In EF Core 5.0, the HomeAddress
navigation can now be configured as a required dependency.
The table created by Migrations will now include non-nullable columns for the required properties of the required dependent.
EF Core will now throw an exception if an attempt is made to save an owner that has a null required dependent. In this example, EF Core will throw when attempting to save a Person
with a null HomeAddress
.
Finally, EF Core will still create an instance of a required dependent even when all the columns for the required dependent have null values.
EF Core 5.0 introduces greater control over the generation of migrations for different purposes. This includes the ability to:
Know if the migration is being generated for a script or for immediate execution
Know if an idempotent script is being generated
Know if the script should exclude transaction statements (See Migrations scripts with transactions below.)
This behavior is specified by the MigrationsSqlGenerationOptions
enum, which can now be passed to IMigrator.GenerateScript
.
It also included the better generation of idempotent scripts with calls to EXEC
on SQL Server when needed. It also enables similar improvements to the scripts generated by other database providers, including PostgreSQL.
SQL scripts generated from migrations now contain statements to begin and commit transactions as appropriate for the migration. For example, the migration script below was generated from two migrations. Notice that each migration is now applied inside a transaction.
As mentioned in the previous section, this use of transactions can be disabled if transactions need to be handled differently.
The dotnet ef migrations list
command now shows which migrations have not yet been applied to the database.
There is now a Get-Migration
command for the Package Manager Console with the same functionality.
A TryGetValue
method has been added to EntityEntry.CurrentValues
and EntityEntry.OriginalValues
. This allows the value of a property to be requested without first checking if the property is mapped in the EF model.
The EF Core command-line tools now automatically configure the ASPNETCORE_ENVIRONMENT
and DOTNET_ENVIRONMENT
environment variables to "Development". This brings the experience when using the generic host in line with the experience for ASP.NET Core during development.
The columns for unmapped base classes are now ordered after other columns for mapped entity types. Note this only impacts newly created tables. The column order for existing tables remains unchanged.
EF Core 5.0 RC1 contains some additional query translation improvements:
Translation of is
on Cosmos.
User-mapped functions can now be annotated to control null propagation.
Support for translation of GroupBy with conditional aggregates.
Translation of Distinct operator over group element before aggregate.
Finally, for RC1, EF Core now allows the use of the lambda methods in the ModelBuilder
for fields as well as properties. For example, if you are averse to properties for some reason and decide to use public fields, then these fields can now be mapped using the lambda builders.
The configuaration are as follows.
While this is now possible, we are certainly not recommending that you do this. Also, note that this does not add any additional field mapping capabilities to EF Core, it only allows the lambda methods to be used instead of always requiring the string methods. This is seldom useful since fields are rarely public.
It is recommended to use .
In previous releases, this behavior was configurable through the registration of a pluralization service. Now in EF Core 5.0, the package is used as a default pluralization service. This means tables People
and Addresses
will now be reverse engineered to entity types named Person
and Address
.
EF Core now supports for greater control over transactions that execute multiple operations.
The standard .NET is now automatically mapped to a string column for databases that do not already have native support. For more information, see the examples for IPAddress
above.
It is sometimes useful to have a single entity type mapped in multiple DbContexts. This is especially true when using , for which it is common to have a different DbContext type for each bounded context.
EF Core properties for custom mutable types for property changes to be detected correctly. This can now be specified as part of configuring the value conversion for the type.
Starting with EF Core 5.0, the default maximum batch size for SaveChanges
on SQL Server is now 42. As is well known, this is also the answer to the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe, and Everything. However, this is probably a coincidence, since the value was obtained through . We do not believe that we have discovered a form of the Ultimate Question, although it does seem somewhat plausible that the Earth was created to understand why SQL Server works the way it does.