.NET 4.5 compatibility heads up

Discussion of open issues, suggestions and bugs regarding Entity Framework support in ADO.NET Data providers
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Remco Blok
Posts: 25
Joined: Tue 14 Dec 2010 12:34

.NET 4.5 compatibility heads up

Post by Remco Blok » Fri 24 Aug 2012 08:42

All,

Just a heads up on .NET 4.5 compatibility. I installed .NET 4.5 on my development PC. However, my application targets .NET 4.0. As you may know .NET 4.5 is an in-place upgrade of .NET 4.0, rather than a side-by-side installation. So if you have .NET 4.5 installed, but you are targeting .NET 4.0, at runtime you will be running .NET 4.5. Turns out that the core Entity Framework code in .NET 4.5 generates different sql than .NET 4.0. Note that I am talking about the core Entity Framework code in the .NET Framework, not about the Entity Framework NuGet package. I found out about the different sql that was generated when I deployed the code to a test server that did not have .NET 4.5 installed.

The generated sql actually failed to parse on the test database. The development database had some new fields added to tables, that were not yet deployed to the test database. The EF model was updated from the development database (database-first is used). The LINQ code though did not select from any of those new fields so I expected it would run fine on the older test database. Well, you know how the generated sql sometimes contains inline select statements that select all the fields from a table when the outer select statements picks only the ones you asked for? That's why the sql did not parse on the test database because the inline select statement was selecting from all the fields the EF model knew about, but some of those fields were not yet deployed on the test database.

The sql on my developer PC was different. On my developer pc the inner select statement only selects those fields that are needed by the outer select statement (or where clauses etc). Much better sql, but I could not understand why it was different. At first I thought a different version of Devart dotConnect for Oracle was deployed on the test server. I made sure they were the same version. Turns out the generated sql on my developer PC was different because I had .NET 4.5 installed. Sure, .NET 4.5 generates better sql than .NET 4.0. But when you target .NET 4.0 you expect it to use .NET 4.0. Why o why is .NET 4.5 an in-place upgrade???

For my test server there were in fact two solutions now: either deploy the latest version of the database, or install .NET 4.5. Of course the correct solution was to deploy the latest version of the database to the test server. Perhaps I should also remove .NET 4.5 from my developer PC while I'm still targeting .NET 4.0.

Remco

Shalex
Site Admin
Posts: 9543
Joined: Thu 14 Aug 2008 12:44

Re: .NET 4.5 compatibility heads up

Post by Shalex » Mon 27 Aug 2012 14:19

The difference in behaviour between Entity Framework 4.0 and Entity Framework 4.5 is a known problem. EF engine is designed by Microsoft, and we cannot change this situation.

skoub
Posts: 32
Joined: Fri 21 May 2010 15:47

Re: .NET 4.5 compatibility heads up

Post by skoub » Wed 14 Nov 2012 14:22

Is it possible to have a follow up on this problem? I understand that it might not be on your side but is there any communication between you and Microsoft about a possible fix?

It would be great if you can keep us informed about the evolution of this bug since that everyone here will be impacted when they will installed NET 4.5!

thank you very much!

alex

Shalex
Site Admin
Posts: 9543
Joined: Thu 14 Aug 2008 12:44

Re: .NET 4.5 compatibility heads up

Post by Shalex » Thu 15 Nov 2012 13:37

We contacted Microsoft to find a solution for the OUTER APPLY issue (first time three years ago), but the problem has not been solved yet. Also there were a lot of users' requests to MS Team at MSDN Forums, Microsoft Connect, UserVoice - no results. The last suggestion concerning OUTER APPLY is at CodePlex (the development of EF6): http://entityframework.codeplex.com/workitem/579.

valeriob
Posts: 2
Joined: Sat 27 Aug 2011 09:29

Re: .NET 4.5 compatibility heads up

Post by valeriob » Mon 21 Jan 2013 15:03

Since EF is now open source, i think should be in Devart's interest to improve compatibility between entity framework and oracle by working on this issues :

http://entityframework.codeplex.com/workitem/617
http://entityframework.codeplex.com/workitem/618

I see a great opportunity here to deliver a lot of value to customers.

Shalex
Site Admin
Posts: 9543
Joined: Thu 14 Aug 2008 12:44

Re: .NET 4.5 compatibility heads up

Post by Shalex » Fri 25 Jan 2013 14:17

We will investigate the possibility of improving open source code.

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