Extending EF4 SQL Generation
- by Basiclife
Hi,
We're using EF4 in a fairly large system and occasionally run into problems due to EF4 being unable to convert certain expressions into SQL. At present, we either need to do some fancy footwork (DB/Code) or just accept the performance hit and allow the query to be executed in-memory.
Needless to say neither of these is ideal and the hacks we've sometimes had to use reduce readability / maintainability.
What we would ideally like is a way to extend the SQL generation capabilities of the EF4 SQL provider. Obviously there are some things like .Net method calls which will always have to be client-side but some functionality like date comparisons (eg Group by weeks in Linq to Entities ) should be do-able.
I've Googled but perhaps I'm using the wrong terminology as all I get is information about the new features of EF4 SQL Generation.
For such a flexible and extensible framework, I'd be surprised if this isn't possible. In my head, I'm imagining inheriting from the [SQL 2008] provider and extending it to handle additional expressions / similar in the expression tree it's given to convert to SQL.
Any help/pointers appreciated.
We're using VS2010 Ultimate, .Net 4 (non-client profile) and EF4. The app is in ASP.Net and is running in a 64-Bit environment in case it makes a difference.
