Deep Dive into EF Core Query Performance: Default Tracking vs. AsNoTracking
In Entity Framework Core (EF Core), query performance and memory management are heavily governed by one underlying mechanism: Change Tracking. While EF Core's default tracking behavior makes data mutations seamless, applying it blindly across read-only queries can introduce significant memory and CPU overhead. Understanding how the ChangeTracker operates under the hood—and knowing when to bypass it using AsNoTracking() or AsNoTrackingWithIdentityResolution()