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Entity Framework and LINQ to SQL: Additional programming patterns in EF4

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The information in this post is out of date.

Visit msdn.com/data/ef for the latest information on current and past releases of EF.

In EF4 we shipped a ton of new features.  One of the primary focuses for the team in the release was making the EF4 API surface more approachable and expanding the number of patterns developers could use when writing their data access code.  Many of the features and patterns added stemmed from our work on LINQ to SQL.  LINQ to SQL offers quite a lot of great stuff and we wanted to combine the best of what EF offers with the great patterns offered by LINQ to SQL.  The team thought it would be productive to recap the subset of features we focused on around productivity, patterns, and LINQ to SQL and to ask for input on patterns we should add in the future.  Some key features (note most bullet items link to previously blog entries) added this release include: 

We haven’t blogged about ExecuteStoreQuery/Translate so will follow up in the next week or so on it. 

In the meantime, we’re interested in hearing your feedback on other key features you like about LINQ to SQL that you’d like to see in EF vNext. 

Any comments or feedback you have would be appreciated.

- The Entity Framework Team

Comments

  • Anonymous
    March 19, 2010
    Do you plan to provide a EF-specific mocking framework in the future or at least write some specific guidance, perhaps in consultation with the Patterns and Practices team, on how somebody might implement such a light-weight mocking framework?  If this falls outside of what you've been asked to work on, I see this as a great opportunity for 3rd-party tool makers to provide such a framework at a reasonable cost.

  • Anonymous
    March 21, 2010
    -Multiple Queries/Resultsets -Enumeration Properties -POCO template support for MetaData (DataAnnotations) -Caching providers These features are available with Linq to SQL (via PLINQO) and nHibernate, and are glaring omissions in EF4.

  • Anonymous
    March 22, 2010
    @Fred = We don't have current plans for releasing a mocking framework. @Sam = Great list, just what I was looking for.  Each of these are being considered for vNext.

  • Anonymous
    March 27, 2010
    The comment has been removed

  • Anonymous
    March 27, 2010
    Enums and second level caching support would be great!

  • Anonymous
    April 01, 2010
    The comment has been removed

  • Anonymous
    April 02, 2010
    Dynamic SQL in stored procedures is not working. There's a simple work-around, but it would be nice if it just worked. It should be included because most often the only thing that changes is the where clause and not  individual columns.

  • Anonymous
    April 03, 2010
    Enum support Better mapping tools Multi-file mapping tools Code to mapping with the designer using POCO The ability to specify a database (or multiple databases) and map to them after creating the entity file would be great. Right now it feels so much like a 'last step' kind of thing. I have to do my model absolutely last because changing it is such a ridiculous chore.

  • Anonymous
    April 15, 2010
    The comment has been removed

  • Anonymous
    April 27, 2010
    The huge one I think for everyone will be support of model's across database boundaries in sql server. Right now for every database call to a table within a db instance I have to make a second call to another db instance to get the "join" to process done manually.   The reference functionality accross databases would be a massive help. Thanks for the current improvements, Todd