performanceentity-frameworkef-code-first

Entity Framework query slow, but same SQL in SqlQuery is fast


I'm seeing some really strange perf related to a very simple query using Entity Framework Code-First with .NET framework version 4. The LINQ2Entities query looks like this:

 context.MyTables.Where(m => m.SomeStringProp == stringVar);

This takes over 3000 milliseconds to execute. The generated SQL looks very simple:

 SELECT [Extent1].[ID], [Extent1].[SomeStringProp], [Extent1].[SomeOtherProp],
 ...
 FROM [MyTable] as [Extent1]
 WHERE [Extent1].[SomeStringProp] = '1234567890'

This query runs almost instantaneously when run through Management Studio. When I change the C# code to use the SqlQuery function, it runs in 5-10 milliseconds:

 context.MyTables.SqlQuery("SELECT [Extent1].[ID] ... WHERE [Extent1].[SomeStringProp] = @param", stringVar);

So, exact same SQL, the resulting entities are change-tracked in both cases, but wild perf difference between the two. What gives?


Solution

  • Found it. It turns out it's an issue of SQL data types. The SomeStringProp column in the database was a varchar, but EF assumes that .NET string types are nvarchars. The resulting translation process during the query for the DB to do the comparison is what takes a long time. I think EF Prof was leading me astray a bit here, a more accurate representation of the query being run would be the following:

     SELECT [Extent1].[ID], [Extent1].[SomeStringProp], [Extent1].[SomeOtherProp],
     ...
     FROM [MyTable] as [Extent1]
     WHERE [Extent1].[SomeStringProp] = N'1234567890'
    

    So the resulting fix is to annotate the code-first model, indicating the correct SQL data type:

    public class MyTable
    {
        ...
    
        [Column(TypeName="varchar")]
        public string SomeStringProp { get; set; }
    
        ...
    }