Entity Framework (EF) Slow Insert and SqlBulkCopy to the Rescue

There was a need to insert bulk data into the database and we are using Entity Framework as our ORM strategy. However, bulk insert took forever. Disabling Auto Detect Changes helps a little. So I decided to look into SqlBulkCopy and ended up writing one for Entity Framework. It is generic enough and can be found in https://gist.github.com/nikyodo85/b82ffd56bb2f0d45a9860dadcdfdc01d.

It works well so far. Some of the drawbacks are:

• It won't be able to auto insert relationship
• No validation check

But very fast. To use it will be very similar to SqlBulkCopy:

Dim efSqlBulkCopy As New EFSqlBulkCopy(Of MyEntityClass)(myDbContext)
efSqlBulkCopy.WriteToServer(listOfMyEntityClass)