EF Core 8.0: Numeric Rowversion for Azure SQL/Microsoft SQL Server

In this post, let's have a look at this small yet handy EF Core 8.0 feature for troubleshooting concurrency issues.

Before EF Core 8.0, the rowversion property in C# classes needs to be of type byte[].

public record Post
{
    public int Id { get; set; }
 
    public string Title { get; set; }
 
    public byte[] Timestamp { get; set; }
}

And when debugging, it looks like the following.

Timestamp as byte[]

Now with EF Core 8.0, we can map the rowversion to long or ulong.

protected override void OnModelCreating(ModelBuilder modelBuilder)
{
    modelBuilder.Entity<Post>()
        .Property(e => e.Timestamp)
        .HasConversion<byte[]>()
        .IsRowVersion();
}

public record Post
{
    public int Id { get; set; }
 
    public string Title { get; set; }
 
    public long Timestamp { get; set; }
}

When debugging it's more readable now.

Timestamp as long

Happy Coding.

Regards,
Jaliya