Entity framework uses a lot of memory

Question

Here is a image from the ANTS memory profiler. It seens that there are a lot of objects hold in memory. How can I find what I am doing wrong?

Answer 1

Couple of things come to my mind:

• You aren't probably Disposing the ObjectContext. Make sure all your database codes are within using(var context = CreateObjectContext()) block
• You have an N-tier architecture and you are passing entities from the data access layer to upper layer without Detaching the entities from ObjectContext. You need to call ObjectContext.Detach(...)
• You are most likely returning a full collection of entities, instead of returning a single enity for single Get operations. For ex, you have queries like from customer in context.Customers select customer instead of doing from customer in context.Customers select customer.FirstOrDefault()

I have had hard time making Entity Framework to work in an N-tier application. It's just not suitable for using in N-tier apps as is. Only EF 4.0 is. You can read about all my adventure in making EF 3 work in an N-tier app.

http://www.codeproject.com/KB/linq/ef.aspx

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