Entity Framework VS Linq to SQL VS Ado.Net With Stored Procedures

Entity Framework VS LINQ to SQL VS ADO.NET with stored procedures?

First off, if you're starting a new project, go with Entity Framework ("EF") - it now generates much better SQL (more like Linq to SQL does) and is easier to maintain and more powerful than Linq to SQL ("L2S"). As of the release of .NET 4.0, I consider Linq to SQL to be an obsolete technology. MS has been very open about not continuing L2S development further.

1) Performance

This is tricky to answer. For most single-entity operations (CRUD) you will find just about equivalent performance with all three technologies. You do have to know how EF and Linq to SQL work in order to use them to their fullest. For high-volume operations like polling queries, you may want to have EF/L2S "compile" your entity query such that the framework doesn't have to constantly regenerate the SQL, or you can run into scalability issues. (see edits)

For bulk updates where you're updating massive amounts of data, raw SQL or a stored procedure will always perform better than an ORM solution because you don't have to marshal the data over the wire to the ORM to perform updates.

2) Speed of Development

In most scenarios, EF will blow away naked SQL/stored procs when it comes to speed of development. The EF designer can update your model from your database as it changes (upon request), so you don't run into synchronization issues between your object code and your database code. The only time I would not consider using an ORM is when you're doing a reporting/dashboard type application where you aren't doing any updating, or when you're creating an application just to do raw data maintenance operations on a database.

3) Neat/Maintainable code

Hands down, EF beats SQL/sprocs. Because your relationships are modeled, joins in your code are relatively infrequent. The relationships of the entities are almost self-evident to the reader for most queries. Nothing is worse than having to go from tier to tier debugging or through multiple SQL/middle tier in order to understand what's actually happening to your data. EF brings your data model into your code in a very powerful way.

4) Flexibility

Stored procs and raw SQL are more "flexible". You can leverage sprocs and SQL to generate faster queries for the odd specific case, and you can leverage native DB functionality easier than you can with and ORM.

5) Overall

Don't get caught up in the false dichotomy of choosing an ORM vs using stored procedures. You can use both in the same application, and you probably should. Big bulk operations should go in stored procedures or SQL (which can actually be called by the EF), and EF should be used for your CRUD operations and most of your middle-tier's needs. Perhaps you'd choose to use SQL for writing your reports. I guess the moral of the story is the same as it's always been. Use the right tool for the job. But the skinny of it is, EF is very good nowadays (as of .NET 4.0). Spend some real time reading and understanding it in depth and you can create some amazing, high-performance apps with ease.

EDIT: EF 5 simplifies this part a bit with auto-compiled LINQ Queries, but for real high volume stuff, you'll definitely need to test and analyze what fits best for you in the real world.

Entity Framework VS pure Ado.Net

By following the naming conventions , you will find it's called : ADO.NET Entity Framework , which means that Entity Framework sits on top of ADO.NET so it can't be faster , It may perform both in equal time , but let's look at EF provides :

• You will no more get stuck with writing queries without any clue about if what you're writing is going to compile or not .
• It makes you rely on C# or your favorite .NET language on writing your own data constraints that you wish to accept from the target user directly inside your model classes .

Finally : EF and LINQ give a lot of power in maintaining your applications later .

There are three different models with the Entity Framework : Model First , Database First and Code First get to know each of 'em .

-The Point about killing performance when remapping is on process , it's because that on the first run , EF loads metadata into memory and that takes time as it builds in-memory representation of model from edmx file.

Entity Framework vs. ADO.NET

Very general question but some thoughts.

Performance:

Plain SqlCommand and DataReader will be significantly faster when it comes to performance as long as all the developers has a clue. With .net 4.5 and EF 5 it seems like EF will get a nice performance boost but plain sql will always be faster.

See here for some numbers: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/adonet/archive/2012/02/14/sneak-preview-entity-framework-5-0-performance-improvements.aspx

Plain ADO.NET also supports the async patter which might be very important in some scenarios. EF doesn't. Atleast not for EF 4.

Security

Plain SQL might be as safe as EF as long as you use paramaterized queries. EF will do this automatically for you to protect you from SQL injection. Because EF always gives you this I would consider it safer but with a slight margin.

Testability

I have found this to be a big win when it comes to EF. Instead of fooling around with mocking I run fast intergration tests against my controllers using SqlCe4. It's very easy to do this as long as you use EF.

Summary

I find EF very capable and the API is pleasant to work with. If you are doing performance intensive things you will have to drop into raw SqlDataReader and SqlBulkCopy from time to time but mixing them is not a problem. I like to use EF where I can live with the performance loss because I'm more productive. Where I feel the hit is to big I will use plain Sql.

what is the difference between linq to sql classes and entity framework

Briefly:

Linq-to-SQL is:

• a "proof-of-concept" done by the Visual C# team to show off the capabilities of Linq
• a straight 1:1 mapper - one table becomes one entity in your code
• for SQL Server only
• not very well suited to support stored procedures (you cannot e.g. create "complex types" to mirror values returned from your stored procedure)
• designer-driven, database-first only approach (and model cannot be easily updated if your database changes)
• basically a dead-end technology - there might be bug fixes here and there, but certainly no new features; it works - but don't expect any further development on this

--> so Linq-to-SQL works, and quite well in .NET 3.5 - but don't expect anything new here....

Entity Framework (at least in .NET v4 and up) is:

• a "proper" OR-mapper technology (and more) done by the ADO.NET/database teams at Microsoft
• a flexible mapper with a physical layer (database schema), a conceptual layer (your .NET objects), and a mapping layer between those two (three-layer approach)
• supports several databases (SQL Server, Oracle etc.) out of the box - fairly easy to write an Entity Framework compatible provider for other databases
• supports stored procedures very well (you can even pick a stored proc for one entity and one operation, e.g. for the DELETE)
• offer database-first, model-first and code-first development approaches
• if using model - that model can be updated from the database if your tables change over time
• the product that Microsoft is investing lots of their resources into - still being very actively developed (additional features, new approachs like code-first development etc.)

--> Entity Framework is my clear choice for .NET 4 and newer

LINQ to SQL or classic ADO.NET?

I love LINQ to SQL; it's easy to work with your data model. If you have .NET 4, consider using ADO.NET Entity Framework, as its the future and it supports multiple databases.

There is a slight overhead with LINQ to SQL if you use LINQ queries against your database, but I think its negligible in most respects. We have had good performance. Additionally, it supports stored procedures, so you always have that to fall back to from a performance perspective.

Which one is faster: Entity Framework vs stored procedures?

Looping 100K times calling a stored procedure will at a minimum create 100K cross process and/or cross network calls will be slow.

If you're using SQL server, another option is to use TVPs (table value paramaters) to avoid calling insert in a loop from your C# code. It allows you to pass a table of data to a stored procedure in one call.

From the link above, they recommend 1000 rows at a time (but always measure and experiment for your app):

Using table-valued parameters is comparable to other ways of using
set-based variables; however, using table-valued parameters frequently
can be faster for large data sets. Compared to bulk operations that
have a greater startup cost than table-valued parameters, table-valued
parameters perform well for inserting less than 1000 rows.

So, maybe try out looping 100 times passing a 1000 rows at a time (instead of cross the boundary 100K times).

You might also want to re-evaluate why asp.net has 100K items at one time in your app. Is that passed up to the server and held in memory at once with possible memory issues? Can that be broken up? Are you doing data processing where asp.net is reading out and processing 100K rows where a sql server agent job might be more appropriate? If you provide more details on the data flow of your app and what it's doing, folks might be able to offer more options.

ADO.NET or Linq to SQL?

LINQ to SQL is part of the ADO.NET family of technologies. It is based on services provided by the ADO.NET provider model. You can therefore mix LINQ to SQL code with existing ADO.NET applications and migrate current ADO.NET solutions to LINQ to SQL. The following illustration provides a high-level view of the relationship.

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Refer to the following:

ADO.NET and LINQ to SQL

Advantages & Disadvantages of LINQ

Performance of LINQ to SQL over Normal Stored procedure

LINQ-to-SQL and Stored Procedures

Entity Framework vs Stored Procedures

Just because EF isn't using sprocs, it doesn't mean that the parameterised queries it runs won't get compiled and cached. SQL Server has got a lot more clever about that over the years.

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