Breaking Change in PLINQO 3.2

No, PLINQO 3.2 has not been released yet. However, when it is, there will be a few small but breaking changes introduced with it. As we often recommend that you use PLINQO's latest nightly builds, we wanted to bring this to your attention ASAP.

Breaking Query Extension Changes

We have added the UniqueMethodPrefix property to the Queries.cst template. Now PLINQO will generate two methods for each unique index and primary key. Methods that had previously returned an instance of an entity will now return IQueryable, thus updating to the latest version may result in compiler errors.

• MethodPrefix Property
  
  • All methods generated return IQueryable.
  • Defaults to "By"
• UniqueMethodPrefix
  
  • All methods generated return single instance of an entity.
  • Defaults to "GetBy"

Don't worry! These method names are still configurable! If you don't like this update, you can change the defaults of your Queries.cst to be whatever you prefer! Also, functionality has only been added, not lost! PLINQO now has methods that return both object and IQueryable types for queries with unique results!

Example

Product p;
using (var db = new PetshopDataContext())
{
    /**** PLINQO 3.1 ****/

    // This "ByKey" method used to return a unique result.
    p = db.Product.ByKey("BD-02");

    // To cache a product by Id, a Where statement had to be used in order to build the IQueryable.
    p = db.Product.Where(p => p.ProductId == "BD-02").FromCache().First();

    /**** PLINQO 3.2 ****/

    // There is no longer a "ByKey" method, it has been replaced with a "GetByKey" method.
    p = db.Product.GetByKey("BD-02");

    // Because there are now By methods for all properties (even ones with unique results),
    // you can now use the extension methods for your cache!
    p = db.Product.ByProductId("BD-02").FromCache().First();
}

Why make these changes?

When we first developed the naming conventions for our extension methods, we did not have as many features that extended IQueryable results. At the time, it made sense that getting by a unique set should only return a single entity rather than an IQueryable with a single result.

Times have changed, PLINQO has expanded and gotten better. PLINQO now offers more features, and frankly, we felt that the API needed to keep up. This update offers the following advantages...

• Unique result query extensions now work with batch queries.
• Unique result query extensions now work with the query result cache.
• Query Extensions are now more consistent, all "By" methods now return same type.

Enjoy!