Force Refresh of Navigation Properties

Reload() should do it, and it seems to work for me.  I tested it as follows in a console app against NorthwindIB:

    private void DoIt() {
      Order anOrder = _mgr.Orders.FirstOrDefault();
      Console.WriteLine("Order Id = {0}; No. of OrderDetails = {1}", anOrder.OrderID, anOrder.OrderDetails.ToList().Count());
      Console.WriteLine("Pause here and add an OrderDetail to this outside of this program...");
      PromptToContinue();
      anOrder.OrderDetails.Reload(MergeStrategy.PreserveChanges);
      Console.WriteLine("Order Id = {0}; No. of OrderDetails = {1}", anOrder.OrderID, anOrder.OrderDetails.ToList().Count());
      PromptToContinue();
    }

    private void PromptToContinue() {
      Console.WriteLine();
      Console.WriteLine("Press ENTER to continue...");
      Console.ReadLine();
    }

At the first PromptToContinue(), while execution was paused, I manually changed the OrderId in one or more of the records in the OrderDetail backing table, in such a way as either to add or remove an OrderDetail from the OrderDetails collection of anOrder. The second output of the OrderDetails count shows the change. I tested it both for an increased and a decreased collection, thinking that maybe it only reloaded entities it already had, but it does pick up newly added children as well.

Of course, the way Reload handles externally made changes to an entity that's already in the collection depends upon the MergeStrategy you use. If you use PreserveChanges, for example, then in the case of an entity that has changed both in the cache and externally, you would not pick up the external changes.

Originally posted by ken.nelson Is it possible that this feature works in syncronous win forms but not in asynchronous Silverlight apps?  Truthfully I was a bit surprised there wasn't a ReloadAsync() method.

Oh, sorry, I wasn't paying attention to which forum we're in.  Of course it would need to be async. Perhaps we've simply not implemented that yet, in which case you'd just have to do a normal async query to refresh the related entities. I'll check into it.