Guide to Entity Framework with

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The other enhancements in Entity Framework are shown as follows:
• 
Task-based asynchronous operation
: This allows Entity Framework to 
take advantage of .NET 4.5 asynchronous support with asynchronous 
queries, updates, and so on. Entity Framework 6 now provides support for a 
simplified approach to asynchronous programming. Entity Framework 6 can 
now be used to run async queries and also save data asynchronously.
• 
Enhanced support for stored procedures and functions in code first
: This 
feature allows you to map stored procedures and database functions by 
using the code-first APIs.
• 
Support for custom code first conventions
: This is a feature that allows you 
to write and register custom code conventions with code first.
Note that the third-party providers for Entity Framework 5 are not 
compatible with Entity Framework 6. This implies that if you are using 
the SQL Server or SQL Server Compact editions, you should update the 
database providers.
Performance improvements in Entity 
Framework 6
In Entity Framework 6, query performance has been improved a lot. One important 
performance improvement is in precompiled queries. A compiled query is one 
that is stored as a parsed tree in memory so that it needn't be regenerated with 
every subsequent call. You can create compiled queries in two ways: creating an 
ObjectQuery
class with 
EntitySQL
and also using the 
CompiledQuery.Compile
function. Compiling expression trees into SQL every time is an overhead particularly 
for queries that are complex. This is exactly why compiled queries were introduced.
The earlier versions of Entity Framework contained the 
CompiledQuery
class that 
you could use to precompile the query and then execute the query as and when 
needed. So, in essence, when using precompiled queries, the SQL to be executed is 
figured out only once (during precompilation) and this is then reused each time the 
compiled query is executed.
Note that if you are using 
CompiledQuery
, you should make sure that 
you are using the query more than once. This is because it is more costly 
than querying data the first time.

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Chapter 1