Plugin performance in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2013/2015

Question

Time to leave the shy mode behind and make my first post on stackoverflow. After doing loads of research (plugins, performance, indexes, types of update, friends) and after trying several approaches I was unable to find a proper answer/solution.

So if possible I would like to get your feedback/help in a Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2013/2015 plugin performance issue (or coding technique)

Scenario:

Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2013/2015
2 Entities with Relationship 1:N
EntityA
EntityB

EntityB has the following columns:
Id | EntityAId | ColumnDemoX (decimal) | ColumnDemoY (currency)

Entity A has: 500 records
Entity B has: 150 records per each Entity A record. So 500*150 = 75000 records.

Objective:

Create a Post Entity A Plugin Update to "mimic" the following SQL command

Update EntityB
Set ColumnDemoX = (some quantity), ColumnDemoY = (some quantity) * (some value)
Where EntityAId = (some id)

One approach could be:

using (var serviceContext = new XrmServiceContext(service)) 
{
  var query = from a in serviceContext.EntityASet
              where a.EntityAId.Equals(someId)
              select a;

  foreach (EntityA entA in query)
  {
    entA.ColumnDemoX = (some quantity);
    serviceContext.UpdateObject(entA);
  }

  serviceContext.SaveChanges();
}

Problem:

The foreach for 150 records in the post plugin update will take 20 secs or more.
While the
Update EntityB Set ColumnDemoX = (some quantity), ColumnDemoY = (some quantity) * (some value) Where EntityAId = (some id)
it will take 0.00001 secs

Any suggestion/solution?

Thank you all for reading.
H

Answer 1

You can use the ExecuteMultipleRequest, when you iterate the 150 entities, save the entities you need to update and after that call the request. If you do this, you only call the service once, that's very good for the perfomance.

If your process could be bigger and bigger, then you should think making it asynchronous as a plug-in or a custom activity workflow.

This is an example:

// Create an ExecuteMultipleRequest object.
requestWithResults = new ExecuteMultipleRequest()
{
    // Assign settings that define execution behavior: continue on error, return responses. 
    Settings = new ExecuteMultipleSettings()
    {
        ContinueOnError = false,
        ReturnResponses = true
    },
    // Create an empty organization request collection.
    Requests = new OrganizationRequestCollection()
};

// Add a UpdateRequest for each entity to the request collection.
foreach (var entity in input.Entities)
{
    UpdateRequest updateRequest = new UpdateRequest { Target = entity };
    requestWithResults.Requests.Add(updateRequest);
}

// Execute all the requests in the request collection using a single web method call.
ExecuteMultipleResponse responseWithResults =
    (ExecuteMultipleResponse)_serviceProxy.Execute(requestWithResults);

Answer 2

Few solutions comes to mind but I don't think they will please you...

1. Is this really a problem ? Yes it's slow and database update can be so much faster. However if you can have it as a background process (asynchronous), you'll have your numbers anyway. Is it really a "I need this numbers in the next second as soon as I click or business will go down" situation ?

2. It can be a reason to ditch 2013. In CRM 2015 you can use a calculated field. If you need this numbers only to show up in forms (eg. you don't use them in reporting), you could also do it in javascript.

3. Warning this is for the desesperate call. If you really need your update to be synchronous, immediate, you can't use calculated fields, you really know what your doing etc... Why not do it directly in the database? I know this is a very bad advice. There are a lot of reason not to do it this way (you can read a few here). It's unsupported and if you do something wrong it could go really bad. But if your real situation is as simple as your example (just a calculated field, no entity creation, no relation modification), you could do it this way. You'll have to consider many things: you won't have any audit on the fields, no security, caching issues, no modified by, etc. Actually I pretty much advise against this solution.

Answer 3

1 - Put it this logic to async workflow. OR 2 - Don't use
serviceContext.UpdateObject(entA);

serviceContext.SaveChanges();.

Get all the records (150) from post stage update the fields and ExecuteMultipleRequest to update crm records in one time. Don't send update request for each and every record