In JPA there is a method EntityManager.getReference() that doesn't actually load anything from database but returns a proxy (see e.g.: this thread ) that will be loaded up only when necessary.
What if I would like to have a query that returns list of references instead of loading real objects from database? Is there equivalent for queries?
Use of proxies with getReference is provider specific, so your provider may have options for regular queries and even querying only in memory. Marking basic relationships as lazy, coupled with JPA 2.1's EntityGraph can allow your queries to only return exactly the data you need and leave the rest unfetched.
Related
working with Spring data JPA and reading it Hibernate first level cache is missed, the answer says "Hibernate does not cache queries and query results by default. The only thing the first level cache is used is when you call EntityManger.find() you will not see a SQL query executing. And the cache is used to avoid object creation if the entity is already loading."
So, if If get an entity not by its Id but other criteria, if I update some property I should not see an update sql inside a transactional methods because it has not been stored int the first level cache, right?
According to the above answer, if I get some list of entities, they will not be stored in first level cache not matter the criteria I use to find them, right?
When a Transactional(propagation= Propagation.NEVER) method loads the same entity by its id two times, is not supposed it will hit the database two times because each loading will run in its own "transaction" and will have its own persistent context? What is the expected behaviour in this case?
Thanks
REST is stateless and EfCore by default tack entities when queried. I believe EfCore performs better without-track.
In web-api, for any Http_Get, I am using dbContext.Set<TEntity>().AsNoTracking(); to get IQueryable instead of dbContext.Set<TEntity>().AsQueryable();.
However there are cases where I have to track entity, e.g. when updating disconnected entity.
Is it a good approach to query without-track for all Http_GET request?
Yes, it is a good approach to use .AsNoTracking() for read-only queries.
See this documentation entry:
No tracking queries are useful when the results are used in a read-only scenario. They're quicker to execute because there's no need to set up the change tracking information. If you don't need to update the entities retrieved from the database, then a no-tracking query should be used.
I understand how IEnumerable and IQueryable works. I just cannot imagine a situation where IEnumerable would be needed in entity framework when working with SQL database. I wonder if I can just discard IEnumerable in EF. Can you provide any useful example that shows IEnumerable could be more useful than IQueryable?
There are three situations that come to mind.
When EF cannot convert your query into a correct SQL statement - so you need to bring the results into memory to complete the computation.
When you need to perform operations that involve operators that do not convert to SQL.
When SQL server is slower at producing the computation than an in-memory calculation. Many times I have found that pulling all the data into memory is quicker than letting SQL to do it.
Provided a data source (as IQueryable) can be queried, then yes, use IQueryable - though you shouldn't be creating IQueryable instances or implementing it yourself, that's what EF is for. You will still need to use IEnumerable as method parameters or return types if you're using EF with external data-sources or other data that isn't queryable itself, such as JOINing an EF table with non-EF data.
For example, you'd have a return type as IEnumerable<T> if the data you're returning isn't queryable because you called AsEnumerable or ToList but you don't want to reveal implementation details - but I'd then prefer IReadOnlyList<T> in that case.
In-memory query performed by DBSet<T>.Local will also return newly added entities that haven't yet been saved to the database. Is there some functionality that would allow us to perform such an in-memory query on an ObjectSet ( BTW - I know we could use ObjectStateManager.GetObjectStateEntries to get similar results)?
Thank you
Local is just advanced wrapper (it is ObservableCollection with all its benefits) around functionality provided by ObjectStateManager.GetObjectStateEntries.
I'm using DataNucleus as a JPA implementation to store my classes in my web application. I use a set of converters which all have toDTO() and fromDTO().
My issue is, that I want to avoid the whole DB being sent over the wire:
If I lazy load, the converter will try to access ALL the fields, and load then (resulting in very eager loading).
If I don't lazy load, I'll get a huge part of the DB, since user contains groups, and groups contains users, and so on.
Is there a way to explicitly load some fields and leave the others as NULL in my loaded class?
I've tried the DataNucleus docs with no luck.
Your DTOs are probably too fine-grained. i.e. dont plan to have a DTO per JPA entity. If you have to use DTOs then make them more coarse grained and construct them manually.
Recently we have had the whole "to DTO or not to DTO, that is the question" discussion AGAIN. The requirement for them (especially in the context of a JPA app) is often no longer there, but one of the arguments FOR DTOs tends to be that the view has coarser data requirements.
To only load the data you really require, you would need to use a custom select clause containing only these elements that you are about to use for your DTOs. I know how painful this is, especially when it involves joins, which is why I created Blaze-Persistence Entity Views which will take care of making the query efficient.
You define your DTO as an interface with mappings to the entity, using the attribute name as default mapping, this looks very simple and a lot like a subset of an entity, though it doesn't have to. You can use any JPQL expression as mapping for your DTO attributes.