Entity Framework 4

Scott Guthrie has written a nice post on his blog on Entity Framework. I am sharing an extract of his post.

Found his original Post here: http://weblogs.asp.net/scottgu/archive/2010/07/16/code-first-development-with-entity-framework-4.aspx

.NET 4 ships with a much improved version of Entity Framework (EF) – a data access library that lives in the System.Data.Entity namespace.

When Entity Framework was first introduced with .NET 3.5 SP1, developers provided a lot of feedback on things they thought were incomplete with that first release.  The SQL team did a good job of listening to this feedback, and really focused the EF that ships with .NET 4 on addressing it. 

Some of the big improvements in EF4 include:

• POCO Support: You can now define entities without requiring base classes or data persistence attributes.
• Lazy Loading Support: You can now load sub-objects of a model on demand instead of loading them up front.
• N-Tier Support and Self-Tracking Entities: Handle scenarios where entities flow across tiers or stateless web calls.
• Better SQL Generation and SPROC support: EF4 executes better SQL, and includes better integration with SPROCs
• Automatic Pluralization Support: EF4 includes automatic pluralization support of tables (e.g. Categories->Category).
• Improved Testability: EF4’s object context can now be more easily faked using interfaces.
• Improved LINQ Operator Support: EF4 now offers full support for LINQ operators.

Visual Studio 2010 also includes much richer EF designer and tooling support. The EF designer in VS 2010 supports both a “database first” development style – where you construct your model layer on a design surface from an existing database.  It also supports a “model first” development style – where you first define your model layer using the design surface, and can then use it to generate database schema from it.

Code-First Development with EF

In addition to supporting a designer-based development workflow, EF4 also enables a more code-centric option which we call “code first development”.  Code-First Development enables a pretty sweet development workflow.  It enables you to:

• Develop without ever having to open a designer or define an XML mapping file
• Define your model objects by simply writing “plain old classes” with no base classes required
• Use a “convention over configuration” approach that enables database persistence without explicitly configuring anything
• Optionally override the convention-based persistence and use a fluent code API to fully customize the persistence mapping

EF’s “code first development” support is currently enabled with a separate download that runs on top of the core EF built-into .NET 4.  CTP4 of this “code-first” library shipped this week and can be downloaded here. 

It works with VS 2010, and you can use it with any .NET 4 project (including both ASP.NET Web Forms and ASP.NET MVC).

 

Found his original Post here: http://weblogs.asp.net/scottgu/archive/2010/07/16/code-first-development-with-entity-framework-4.aspx