Updating a single column on a table - best practices?

Hi All, 
I'm trialling DevForce, and looking at porting an application that has thousands and thousands of hard-coded SQL strings.  Scary stuff.

I'm basically looking at different scenarios, and trying to work out how to implement those in DevForce / Entity Framework.

For example, the 2-tier app I'm looking at currently would run something like this:

UPDATE
PURCHASEORDERS
SET
ORDER_AMOUNT = @p1,
ORDER_TAX = @p2
WHERE
ORDER_ID = @p3

Now, this might update 1000+ rows in the database.

I don't want to have to read all those entities into memory, set the values, then write them back out to the database ... that seems like overkill, and a performance black hole.

So how do I do this in general?  Do I:

1.   Setup a stored procedure to do the work, and somehow call that through DevForce / EF? ;
2.   Call this directly from the client? ;
3.   Setup a procedure on the server to do the work via a stored procedure, and call this from the client, passing the 3 parameters?

I'm looking for best practice suggestions / examples.  Can anyone help out?

Thanks!

T