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Leveling up data: Upgrade from EF6 to EF7 and blast off
![icon](https://ekbana.com/uploads/author/639abe1617e8f.png)
By EKbana on November 30, 2022
5m readUpgrade from Entity Framework 6 to Entity Framework 7 for improved performance, support for new data stores, and a simplified, modular architecture. Plan the upgrade, check compatibility, update dependencies, and test the application.
.NET Framework 4.8 and EF 6
We have a straightforward web API developed with the traditional.NET Framework 4.8, and Entity Framework 6 serves as our ORM. EF6 is not the same as EF Core 6.
We measure the response time for inserting, updating, and deleting one entity as well as a thousand entities.
We utilized Benchmark.NET, which is a standard method of executing effective tests in.Net.
![](https://ekbanav3.ekbana.net/uploads/ckEditorImages//1675243727.webp)
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We moved the Web API to.NET 7, however we are still mostly utilizing EF6 as our ORM. Both traditional.NET 4.8 and the most recent.NET 7 are compatible with EF 6. None of our business logic needed to be updated.
We re-ran the same benchmarks. Let us now see the graphs.
![](https://ekbanav3.ekbana.net/uploads/ckEditorImages//1675243943.webp)
Without modifying any of our code, we can enhance performance by about 20% by simply moving from.NET 4.8 to.NET 7.
![](https://ekbanav3.ekbana.net/uploads/ckEditorImages//1675243977.webp)
For 1000 entities, the CRUD operation hasn't really improved much. This is the result of 1000 records requiring roundtrips to the database. This is how EF 6 operates.
Then, we reran our benchmarks after upgrading our API from EF 6 to EF 6 Core (the LTS version that was released last year), not EF 7 Core (which is the most recent version we will be doing this in a while). Let's examine the outcomes.
![](https://ekbanav3.ekbana.net/uploads/ckEditorImages//1675244046.webp)
Once more, moving to has resulted in a performance improvement of about 10% by switching to EF Core 6.
The business logic itself has not changed at all; just minimal code changes, such as initializing constructors and changing code references, were required.
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We see a massive improvement in CRUD operation of 1000 entities. It's like 10 times better performance.
EF 6 will do round trips to database for every records
EF 6 CORE has batching optimization built in which will result in reduced round trips. It takes the set of these records as a batch and sends them to the server.
We now upgrade our ORM to EF CORE 7 and then re-run the benchmarks.
![](https://ekbanav3.ekbana.net/uploads/ckEditorImages//1675244412.webp)
One thousand entities CRUD operations have been improved. It performs about ten times better.
For each record, EF 6 will make round visits to the database.
Due to batching optimization incorporated into EF 6 CORE, round trips will be decreased. It sends the entire collection of these records to the server in one batch.
![](https://ekbanav3.ekbana.net/uploads/ckEditorImages//1675244833.webp)
You can see bulk insert operation is also 20 percent faster with .NET 7 Core.
![](https://ekbanav3.ekbana.net/uploads/ckEditorImages//1675244961.webp)
Some new features of EF CORE 7 :
ExecuteDeleteAsync();
ExecuteUpdateAsync();
JSON viewmodel support for entities and query etc
Using these new features we can write efficient query codes and avoid unnecessary round trips to the database.
![](https://ekbanav3.ekbana.net/uploads/ckEditorImages//1675245032.webp)
Upgrading your projects to the latest version of .NET and EF will drastically improve your application performance.