ADO.NET Entity Framework in Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 and Microsoft .NET Framework 4

Eric Nelson eric.nelson@microsoft.comhttp://geekswithblogs.net/iupdateable (or http://bit.ly/ericnelson )http://twitter.com/ericnel http://twitter.com/ukmsdn

Developer EvangelistMicrosoft UK

Were you on twitter last Dec?http://twitter.com/ericnel

Agenda

Quick recap of the journey so farEntity Framework 4.0 Drill Down

Lots of demos

Object Relational Mapping

Many ORMs out thereNo clear “winner” = relatively little adoption of ORMDevelopers waiting on MicrosoftThen we shipped two ... hmmm

LINQ to SQL in Visual Studio 2008ADO.NET Entity Framework in Visual Studio 2008 SP1

ADO.NET Entity Framework Recap

Tools and services to create an Entity Data Model (EDM)

Conceptual to Mapping to Storage

Tools and services for consuming an Entity Data Model

LINQ to Entities, Object Services and Entity SQL

Together they address the “impedance mismatch”

Conceptual

Mapping

Storage

Entity Data Model

Rows in Tables

Objects in Applications

Entity Framework 1.0Too many pain points

The designer!Model First not supportedPoor support for Stored ProceduresNo Pluralization/SingularizationForeign Keys hiddenLazy Loading not supportedMissing LINQ Operators vs LINQ to SQLGenerated SQL unreadableNo support for Plain Old CLR ObjectsN-Tier difficult

Entity Framework 4.0 Removing the friction

Better Tools and Design ExperienceMore powerful/flexible runtimeAnd

Persistence Ignorance*Code Only*N-Tier*

Note:* Delivered in .NET Framework 4 and a separate download

Better Tools and Design Experience

Model FirstTemplated code generationStored ProceduresPluralization/Singularization Complex TypesBetter delete and search

Model First and Templated Code Generation

demo

More powerful/flexible runtime

Lazy Loading (Deferred Loading in Beta 1 )Foreign Keys surfacedMore complete LINQ implementationExecuteStoreQueryEntityFunctions and SqlFunctionsImprovements to generated SQL

Deferred Loading, Functions, Generated SQL

demo

http://blogs.msdn.com/adonet/archive/2009/08/05/improvements-to-the-generated-sql-in-net-4-0-beta1.aspx

Persistence Ignorance

First class support for Persistence Ignorance No modifications to your classes!

Persistence Ignorancedemo

Code Only

Create the database from the classesNo modelConvention to config

Code Onlydemo

N-Tier

Self Tracking Entities

N-Tierdemo

Entity Framework

The designer!No support for Plain Old CLR ObjectsNo Pluralization/SingularizationForeign Keys hiddenModel First not supportedLazy Loading not supportedMissing LINQ Operators vs LINQ to SQLGenerated SQL unreadableN-Tier difficultPoor support for Stored Procedures

Summary

Entity Framework 4.0 is rather nice!We continue to listen and improveResources

Install VS2010 Beta 2 http://bit.ly/vs2010b2 My blog for EF 4 posts http://bit.ly/ericnelsonChannel 9 Screencasts on EF4 http://bit.ly/ch9ukdevteam Entity Framework 4.0 Resources http://bit.ly/ef4resources Entity Framework Team Blog http://blogs.msdn.com/adonet/Entity Framework Design Blog http://blogs.msdn.com/efdesign/