Entity Framework 4.0 News

NunoGodinho — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 06:00:00 GMT

In the last few days I’ve been seeing several element of the Entity Framework 4.0 that come with the .NET 4.0 and I there are several interesting news that I thought I could wrap up a little bit in this post, and so lets start with the news.

Providers made for version 3.5 will work unmodified
- Great news for all the ones that develop their own custom providers in order to work with Entity Framework, and of course a nice information to know that the provider model is not being changed on this version.
- In order to know more about the several changes read here.

New CTP for the ADO.NET Entity Framework Features that work with Visual Studio 2010 Beta 2 version
- Interesting news since in some cases we needed this in order to continue working with features like Self-Tracking Entities, and some new stuff is also here, like enhancements in the Code-Only EF model, in terms of:
  - Fine grained control over the model
    - Specify Navigation Properties inversed
    - Property Facets
    - Complex types
  - Customizing Mappings
    - Change Table and Column Names
    - Custom inheritance
    - Entity Splitting
    - Joining Table Mapping
- Read more here

Model First with Entity Framework
- Now we can develop our EF model first and even extend the Database Generation Workflow and DDL generation Template.
  - This is very important and shows how this EF version is extensible and lets us define what we want to happen, and how it will happen, and this is a great power for the ones that are using EF or using other ORM technologies and need more power into their models.
  - Uses WF 4.0 as the way to provide extensibility for the Data Generations. Very interesting indeed.
- A very good post of the PM of the Entity Designer of the EF, Noam Ben-Ami here.

Foreign Key Relationships
- This has always been a challenge with the different ORM technologies that I’ve used, and in the EF 4.0 a lot is being change, from using Implicit Associations to Explicit Associations.
  - “In .NET 4.0 we’ve added support for FK Properties and FK Associations to the Entity Framework. It’s still possible to use Independent Associations and the two can be mixed in models. We’re excited to offer FK Associations because they simplify many common Entity Framework coding tasks. Hopefully this walkthrough has given you a feel for how you can use FK Associations and Properties.”
- Read more about this here.

Automatic Generation of Stored Procedures Return Types
- Sometimes we need for a stored procedure to return several values, like a table, and in order to make this easier the EF team decided to provide a way to easily return a collection of complex types from Stored Procedures, and so in this new version the designer allows us to define with type of results the Store Procedure will return and then it will generate the need type on the Database.
- Very interesting also, read more here.

Walkthroughs about Code-Only and Self-Tracking Entities.

Hope this helps you knowing a little more about Entity Framework 4.0 and where to find more information’s.

Interesting reading about Entity Framework 4.0

NunoGodinho — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 05:00:00 GMT

Entity Framework has suffered great changes and in order to know more about them I recommend the following reading:

POCO (Plain Old CLR Object or Persistence ) in the Entity Framework 4.0

Sneak Preview: Persistence Ignorance and POCO in Entity Framework 4.0
POCO in the Entity Framework:

“Why is POCO important in Entity Framework? Is important because now we have the ability to really separate the Storage Model from the Conceptual Model, and being the Conceptual Model our normal CLR Objects, that was not possible in previous versions of Entity Framework. This is a huge breakthrough for this 4.0 version. Is not perfect, and in this technologies it never is but it’s very interesting”

Part 1 - The Experience (Explains how to make this two parts of the POCO experience with Entity Framework 4.0, from making the Model to the designing of the POCO entities, as well as answering some interesting questions)
Part 2 – Complex Types, Deferred Loading and Explicit Loading (Goes further in the POCO entities and make changes shows how to implement Complex Types as well as configuring the Loading by using Deferred/Lazy Loading or Explicit Loading)
Part 3 – Change Tracking with POCO (Explains furthermore how the Change Tracking, that is so important in Entity Framework, works in POCO entities and how can it be configured by using Metadata)

Using Repository and Unit of Work patterns with Entity Framework 4.0 (Explains how to implement common patterns like Repository and Unit of Work using Entity Framework 4.0)
Entity Framework Feature CTP 1 (Announcement of the Entity Framework CTP Features for .NET 4.0 Beta 1)

Feature CTP Walkthrough: Self Tracking Entities for Entity Framework (Explains the scenarios on where to use the Self Tracking Entities)
Feature CTP Walkthrough: POCO Templates for Entity Framework (Explains how to use POCO Templates, that is a kind of T4 Template in order to generate POCO entities)
Feature CTP Walkthrough: Code Only for Entity Framework (Explains how to Entity Framework without any model like EDMX, just code)

I hope you enjoy the reading.

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Entity Framework 4.0 News

Interesting reading about Entity Framework 4.0