Why Every EF Core Developer Needs to Try Entity Framework Extensions

When building data-intensive applications with Entity Framework Core, you will eventually face a critical performance challenge: inserting, updating, or deleting thousands of records efficiently.

The standard EF Core approach using SaveChanges() works perfectly for small datasets or even a few hundred rows, but it becomes a significant bottleneck when you need to process thousands of records.

There is a better solution: Entity Framework Extensions provides high-performance bulk operations that can process thousands of records in less than a second. You still use the same code you have in EF Core with a new set of DbContext extension methods.

In this post, we will explore:

• Why inserting 10,000+ rows with EF Core quickly becomes a performance bottleneck
• What happens under the hood when you call SaveChanges() and why it slows down at scale
• How Entity Framework Extensions solve bulk data problems without rewriting your EF Core code
• How to import data at scale using BulkInsert to insert thousands of records in a single operation
• How to apply mass updates with BulkUpdate to efficiently modify large datasets
• How to clean up data with BulkDelete to remove large volumes of records in one database round-trip
• How to perform upserts and sync external systems using BulkMerge with minimal code
• How to run full data synchronization jobs using BulkSynchronize to keep databases in sync reliably

Let's dive in.

Why Inserting 10,000+ Rows with EF Core Becomes a Performance Bottleneck

You are building an IoT platform that collects telemetry data from thousands of devices every minute. Each device sends temperature readings, humidity levels, and status updates.

Your system needs to insert 50,000 telemetry records into the database every few minutes.

You start with the standard Entity Framework Core approach:

app.MapPost("/telemetries", async (IotDbContext dbContext, InsertTelemetryRequest request) =>
{
   var telemetryEntries = request.MapToTelemetryEntries();

   dbContext.Telemetries.AddRange(telemetryEntries);
   await dbContext.SaveChangesAsync();

   return Results.Ok();
});

Using the standard SaveChanges() approach, this operation could take several seconds or even minutes and consume excessive memory. This is a common problem when working with Entity Framework Core at scale.

EF Core is excellent for typical CRUD operations, but it was not designed for bulk data operations. When you need to insert, update, or delete thousands of records, the standard SaveChanges() method becomes a performance bottleneck.

Entity Framework Extensions is a library that solves this problem. It extends EF Core with high-performance bulk operations that can handle large datasets efficiently.

All examples in this post were tested on a SQL Server database using the IoT telemetry application.

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