LinqToSql Plus Bulk Delete
Description
DELETE all entities from the database.
All rows that match the entity key are DELETED from the database.
// Easy to use context.BulkDelete(list); // Easy to customize context.BulkDelete(customers, options => options.ColumnPrimaryKeyExpression = customer => customer.Code);
Purpose
Deleting entities using a custom key from file importation is a typical scenario.
Despite the ChangeTracker being outstanding to track what's modified, it lacks in term of scalability and flexibility.
SubmitChanges requires one database round-trip for every entity to delete. So if you need to delete 10000 entities, then 10000 database round-trips will be performed which is INSANELY slow.
BulkDelete in counterpart offers great customization and requires the minimum database round-trips as possible.
Performance Comparisons
| Operations | 1,000 Entities | 2,000 Entities | 5,000 Entities |
|---|---|---|---|
| SubmitChanges | 1,000 ms | 2,000 ms | 5,000 ms |
| BulkDelete | 45 ms | 50 ms | 60 ms |
How can I specify more than one option?
You can specify more than one option using anonymous block.
context.BulkDelete(list, options => {
options.BatchSize = 100);
options.ColumnInputExpression = c => new {c.ID, c.Name, c.Description});
});
How can I specify the Batch Size?
You can specify a custom batch size using the BatchSize option.
Read more: BatchSize
context.BulkDelete(list, options => options.BatchSize = 100);
How can I specify custom keys to use?
You can specify custom key using the ColumnPrimaryKeyExpression option.
Read more: ColumnPrimaryKeyExpression
// Single Key context.BulkDelete(customers, options => options.ColumnPrimaryKeyExpression = customer => customer.Code); // Surrogate Key context.BulkDelete(customers, options => options.ColumnPrimaryKeyExpression = customer => new { customer.Code1, customer.Code2 });
Why BulkDelete doesn't use the ChangeTracker?
To provide the best performance possible!
Since using the ChangeTracker can greatly reduce performance, we chose to let SubmitChanges method handle scenarios with ChangeTracker and BulkDelete, scenarios without it.
Why BulkDelete is faster than SubmitChanges?
The major difference between both methods is SubmitChanges uses the ChangeTracker but not the BulkDelete method.
By skipping the ChangeTracker, some methods like DetectChanges are no longer required which greatly helps to improve the performance.