Preface

The ADO.NET Entity Framework, the next generation of Microsoft's data access technology, is an extended Object Relational Mapping (ORM) technology that makes it easy to tie together the data in your database with the objects in your applications. This is done by abstracting the object model of an application from its relational or logical model. It is an extended ORM in the sense that it provides many additional features that a traditional ORM does not.

This book is a clear and concise guide to the ADO.NET Entity Framework. Packed with plentiful code examples, this book helps you learn the ADO.NET Entity Framework and ADO.NET Data Services and build a better data access layer for your application.

The intent of writing this book is updating you to the latest trends and developments as far as Entity Framework is concerned.

What this book covers

Chapter 1, Introducing the ADO.NET Entity Framework, is an introduction to the basics of the ADO.NET Entity Framework (EF), its usefulness, features, and benefits.

Chapter 2, Getting Started, discusses how you can get started with EF, create an Entity Data Model (EDM), and write a program to query data.

Chapter 3, Entities, Relationships, and the Entity Data Model, gives a detailed explanation of entities, relationships, and each of the sections of the EDM.

Chapter 4, Working with Stored Procedures in the Entity Data Model, provides a sample application that illustrates how to perform CRUD operations against the EDM.

Chapter 5, Working with Entity Client and Entity SQL, discusses the Entity SQL query language and how to work with the Entity Client provider.

Chapter 6, Working with LINQ to Entities, includes a detailed discussion on LINQ to Entities with many code examples.

Chapter 7, Working with the Object Services Layer, provides a detailed discussion on the Object Services Layer and its helpful and useful features.

Chapter 8, Working with WCF Data Services, provides an introduction to WCF Data Services, the REST architectural paradigm, and how these can be used with the EDM to perform CRUD operations.

Appendix, Advanced Concepts, covers a few advanced concepts. These include: REST and REST-based service frameworks and OData. We would also explore the HTTP methods and the request and response codes. Lastly, we would take a look at the new features in Entity Framework 7.

What you need for this book

To learn the concepts covered in this book, the reader should have a proper understanding and working knowledge of the following:

• ADO.NET

• ASP.NET

• C#

To execute the code samples in this book, the following technologies should be installed on your system:

• Visual Studio 2013 or later

• SQL Server 2012 or later

• Windows 7/Windows 8 or higher

Who this book is for

This book is for C# developers who want an easier way to create their data access layer. You will need to be comfortable with ADO.NET, but you do not need to know anything about the Entity Framework. Along the way, we will create some ASP.NET applications, so familiarity with this will be helpful. The book is a clear and concise guide to the ADO.NET Entity Framework 6 with plenty of real-life code examples.

Conventions

In this book, you will find a number of text styles that distinguish between different kinds of information. Here are some examples of these styles and an explanation of their meaning.

Code words in text, database table names, folder names, filenames, file extensions, pathnames, dummy URLs, user input, and Twitter handles are shown as follows: "Entity Framework 6 now provides support for spatial data types using DbGeography and DbGeometry types."

A block of code is set as follows:

public class User
    {
        public virtual Int32 UserID { get; set; }
        public virtual String UserName { get; set; }
        public virtual String CreatedBy { get; set; }
        public virtual DateTime CreatedDate { get; set; }
        public virtual String ModifiedBy { get; set; }
        public virtual DateTime ModifiedDate { get; set; }
    }

When we wish to draw your attention to a particular part of a code block, the relevant lines or items are set in bold:

static void Main(string[] args)
        { 
            DataContextDataContextvar context = new DataContext(GetConnectionString());
            context.CreateDatabase();
        }

Any command-line input or output is written as follows:

edmgen /mode:fullgeneration /c:"Data Source=.;Initial Catalog=SecurityDB;User ID=sa;Password=sa1@3;" /p:SecurityDB

New terms and important words are shown in bold. Words that you see on the screen, for example, in menus or dialog boxes, appear in the text like this: "You can see that the Convert to Enum option is enabled."

Note

Warnings or important notes appear in a box like this.

Tip

Tips and tricks appear like this.

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