How can I share an entity framework model across website users
- by richardmoss
Hello,
Currently my website is based around MVC and the Entity Framework running against a SQL Server 2005 database. So far, it has all been running very smoothly, and I really enjoy MVC and its slimmer more concise code (and no huge viewstates or soul destroying postbacks ;))
Recently I was working on upgrading the site to use a simple forum system, and this is where I started running into problems. When I was testing the site using two different browsers, if I created or replied to a post in one browser, the other browser couldn't see the post.
At the moment, each visitor to the site gets their own copy of the entity model, which I store in their session data. Obviously this is the problem as updates to one model aren't getting carried to the other.
As a test, I tried storing a single copy of the model which all visitors would access by assigning the model to a static variable. This worked, and both browsers could see each others modifications. However, it had its side effects. For example, if I fired up both browsers at the same time and the model was initialized, one browser would crash, and the other would work fine, despite me using a locking object so in theory one of them should have been delayed until the model was ready (of course I could have implemented this wrong ;)). Also, originally this site did use one model for all visitors and when it was live, it frequently shut down - killing the IIS application pool while it did. Now I'm not sure if this was related, but I don't really want to reintroduce whatever bug I had that caused this shut down.
So, my question is a simple one really - what is the best way of either using the same model for all website users so they all see updates, or if they do have separate copies (which I imagine will have a performance impact in time) how can the models detect changes in the database and update themselves according.
Thanks in advance for any advice!
Regards;
Richard Moss
