Entity Framework 6: is there a way to iterate through a table without holding each row in memory

Question

I would like to be able to iterate through every row in an entity table without holding every row in memory. This is a read only operation and every row can be discarded aft

Answer 1

You need to use an EntityDataReader, which behaves in a way similar to a traditional ADO.NET DataReader.

The problem is that, to do so, you need to use ObjectContext instead of DbContext, which makes things harder.

See this SO answer, not the acepted one: How can I return a datareader when using Entity Framework 4?

Even if this referes to EF4, in EF6 things work in the same way. Usually an ORM is not intended for streaming data, that's why this functionality is so hidden.

You can also look at this project: Entity Framework (Linq to Entities) to IDataReader Adapter