Is DbSet<>.Local something to use with special care?

Question

For a few days now, I have been struggling with retrieving my entities from a repository (DbContext).

I am trying to save all the entities in an atomic act

Answer 1

As mentioned by Terry Coatta, the best approach if you don't want to save the records first would be checking both sources.

For example:

public Person LookupPerson(string emailAddress, DateTime effectiveDate)
{
    Expression> criteria = 
        p =>
            p.EmailAddress == emailAddress &&
            p.EffectiveDate == effectiveDate;

    return LookupPerson(_context.ObjectSet.Local.AsQueryable(), criteria) ?? // Search local
           LookupPerson(_context.ObjectSet.AsQueryable(), criteria); // Search database
}

private Person LookupPerson(IQueryable source, Expression> predicate)
{
    return source.FirstOrDefault(predicate);
}