Reworking EF nested connections to avoid MSDTC on Azure

Question

I've deployed to Azure and Azure SQL, which doesn't support MSDTC and I'm having trouble understanding how to rework my code to prevent what I assume is nested connections. I'm fairly new to EF and my knowledge of TransactionScope is not wonderful, so I'm not sure that I have the right pattern.

I am trying to use repos, which call on a shared instance of the ObjectContext (I tried to dispose on EndRequest but had issues, so this is another problem for me).

I have a transaction which calls SaveChanges on the ObjectContext instance several times, but at some point it becomes disposed. What is governing this and can you recommend what I can do to get it working correctly?

Answer 1

If you want to avoid issues with distributed transaction you must handle connection manually because you need only one opened connection per TransactionScope = one context instance with one connection used for all queries and database updates. The code should look like:

using (var context = new YourObjectContext()) {
    context.Connection.Open();

    ...
}

I am trying to use repos, which call on a shared instance of the ObjectContext (I tried to dispose on EndRequest but had issues, so this is another problem for me).

If you share your context instance among multiple request or even worse if you use just single context instance to handle all your requests you should stop now and completely redesign your application. Otherwise it will not work correctly.