Windows Azure Table: C# API for Update/Merge?

Question

Windows Azure Table has two distinct mechanisms for altering an existing entity: Update, which modifies properties in place, and Merge which replaces the entire entity.

Which of these is used when you call TableServiceContext.UpdateObject()? (I'm guessing Update.) And is the other one exposed at all through this API?

(Apologies if this is right under my nose in the docs and I'm not seeing it.)

Answer 1

Actually, it's Merge that modifies properties in place, and Update that replaces the entire entity.

I believe the storage client library does a merge by default, but I think you can use SaveChangeOptions.UpdateAsReplace to modify this behavior.

An easy way to test/verify this is to run a debugging proxy like Fiddler and just see what happens over the wire.