Entity Framework - SQL Azure Retry Policy

Question

Could anyone guide me how to implement a retry policy with EF to SQL Azure, please.

Answer 1

I am using the Transiet Fault Handling Framework, provided in lue of a better solution by EF team.

• Add the binary, or the project in the link above to your solution, and add the reference to your project.
• Instantiate a retry policy with suitable parameters:

    var retryPolicy = new RetryPolicy<SqlAzureTransientErrorDetectionStrategy>(
            10, 
            TimeSpan.FromSeconds(0.5), 
            TimeSpan.FromSeconds(2)
    ) { FastFirstRetry = true };

• Use your retry policy object for any atomic work on the context.

    using(var context = new ... )
    {
        ...//Maybe you do something to the database...
        retryPolicy.ExecuteAction(() => context.SaveChanges());
    }

Answer 2

Entity Framework 6 has added connection resiliency as a new feature to help address this, quoting from Microsoft: "enables automatic recovery from transient connection failures". Here is the Connection Resiliency Spec for EF6 if you want to learn more.

EF6 at NuGet