Geek asks and answers

What effect does the virtual keyword have on object properties in Entity Framework 5?

I know that navigation properties in the Entity Framework must have the virtual keyword in front of them, otherwise EF will not be able to do this magic of navigation properties. But what is the effect of placing the virtual keyword in front of other properties? I recently saw an example in which each property of an object was declared using the virtual keyword. Is EF 5 really lazy to load every property if I do this, or am I missing something about how this works?

+5
source share
1 answer

Using a virtual keyword for navigation properties is necessary for lazy loading. Using a dynamic keyword for all associated properties is necessary for dynamically tracking changes. All requirements of both options are described in the documentation .

In EF 4.0, dynamic change tracking was recommended, and because of this, the POCO T4 generator used virtual properties, but since EF 4.1 , snapshot change tracking is recommended as an initial option, with switching to dynamic change tracking only if the change tracking is a chapshot a victim of performance issues.

+2
source

More articles:


All Articles