Merging entities in Entity Framework

Question

I have two sets of identical SQL tables both belonging to separate schemas, one is the default [dbo] the other is [staging]. Data comes through to the staging schema via a web service, every operation is an insert, and no updates occur.

As the data comes through to staging, I would like to find the record in the [dbo] tables and update all fields with what has come through (including the properties for all related child entities). If no matching records are found (based on a non-primary key but unique field) I would then create the relevant records (entities).

Is there a way to achieve this merging of records from the two schemas without manually pairing up fields from the two schemas?

Answer 1

I've in the past used Reflection to pair up the properties of two like entities. I don't really know of any better way than to loop the Properties of the type and set the target entity to the values of the source entity.