Handling BLOBs in Entity Framework 4.0 in a stream-fashion

Question

Is it possible to handle (read and write) binary data to SQL Server using Entity Framework 4.0 using streams? (i.e.: not the whole content shipped in a byte array)

An example could be taken from Download and Upload images from SQL Server via ASP.Net MVC which illustrates the way to stream nicely data from SQL Server in an example available for ASP.NET MVC. However it requires direct access to the DB and I am curious whether this could be done using an ORM.

Answer 1

Unfortunately, this is not supported in Entity Framework 4. You'll need to work directly with the database.

I can't see it happening anytime soon either, since an ORM that didn't materialise objects fully in memory would have a lot of complications.

James