FileTable and Foreign Key from another table

Question

I try to use FileTable with Entity Framework (I know it is not supported directly). So I use custom Sql commands to insert and delete (no update) the data. My problem is I have a table which refers to the FileTable with a foreign key to the stream_id of the FileTable. If I insert into the FileTable, how can I get the stream_id back?

I want to use SqlBulkCopy to insert lots of files, I can bulk insert into the FileTable, but SqlBulkCopy won´t tell me the inserted stream_id values.

If I execute single insert statements with select scopeIdentity() or something similar, the performance becomes worse.

I want to insert like 5.000 files (2MB until 20MB) into the FileTable and connect them with my own Table via foreign key. Is this bad practice and I should use a simple path column and store the data directly in the filesystem? I thought FileTable is doing exactly this for me, because I need to secure the database and the files are always in sync even if I go one hour or 4 days back in the past. I cannot backup the database and the filesystem exactly at the same time so they are 100 percent synchronized.

Answer 1

I want to use SqlBulkCopy to insert lots of files, I can bulk insert into the FileTable, but SqlBulkCopy won´t tell me the inserted stream_id values.

SqlBulkCopy doesn't allow to retrieve inserted identity values or any other values.

Solution 1

You can find on the web a lot of code snippets to insert into a temporary table using SqlBulkCopy. Then from the temporary table to the destination table using the OUTPUT clause to get the stream_id values.

It's a few more steps, but the performance is still very great.

Solution 2

Disclaimer: I'm the owner of the project Entity Framework Extensions

Disclaimer: I'm the owner of the project Bulk Operations

Both libraries are not free but allow to overcome SqlBulkCopy limitation more easily.

Both of them support to output identity value.

// Easy to customize
var bulk = new BulkOperation<Customer>(connection);
bulk.BatchSize = 1000;
bulk.ColumnInputExpression = c => new { c.Name,  c.FirstName };
bulk.ColumnOutputExpression = c => c.CustomerID;
bulk.ColumnPrimaryKeyExpression = c => c.Code;
bulk.BulkMerge(customers);

// Easy to use
var bulk = new BulkOperation(connection);
bulk.BulkInsert(dt);
bulk.BulkUpdate(dt);
bulk.BulkDelete(dt);
bulk.BulkMerge(dt);