ADO.NET Entity Framework June 2007 CTP now available
UPDATE: Added note about removing previous versions before installing this CTP.
The ADO.NET Entity Framework June 2007 CTP is now available. This CTP contains updates to the ADO.NET Entity Framework since the Visual Studio Codename "Orcas" Beta 1 release, including changes in Object Services, Query, Entity Client, and the Entity Data Model Wizard in Visual Studio. Some of the new features include IPOCO, detaching from long-running ObjectContext instances, multiple entity sets per type, support for referential integrity constraints, span support, transactions, serialization, no more default constructors in code-generated classes, improvements to stored procedure support, access to the underlying store connection, directory macros in the entity connection string to support hosted scenarios, native SQL read-only views, UNICODE support in Entity SQL, query plan caching, and canonical functions in Entity SQL. We will have future posts that go into more detail about these new features.
Be sure to read the installation instructions carefully on the download page--this is a CTP after all. One key thing to highlight is the .NET Framework v3.0 requirement. Although the Visual Web Developer Codename "Orcas" Express Edition June 2007 CTP is supposed to install this version of the .NET Framework if it isn't already present, the installation fails if the .NET Framework v3.0 is missing. If you're running Vista, it's already on your machine. Otherwise, you can download it from the Microsoft.com Download Center.
Installation instructions
The ADO.NET Entity Framework June 2007 CTP should be installed only on non-production computers.
- If you have installed previous versions of Visual Studio Codename "Orcas" or the .NET Framework 3.5, including Beta 1, you must first uninstall that version before installing the June 2007 CTP.
- Make sure you have the Microsoft .NET Framework 3.0 on your machine. This version of the .NET Framework is included with Windows Vista and can be downloaded from the Microsoft Download Center for other supported versions of Windows.
- Download and run the Microsoft .NET Framework 3.5 June 2007 CTP installer and follow the steps in the setup wizard.
- Download and run the Visual Web Developer Codename "Orcas" Express Edition June 2007 CTP installer and follow the steps in the setup wizard.
- Download and run the ADO.NET Entity Framework June 2007 CTP installer and follow the steps in the setup wizard.
- Access "ADO.NET Entity Framework" through the Start menu. This Start menu folder contains pointers to the documentation and samples.
Samples
Our samples are on CodePlex. We will be adding more samples in the next couple of weeks that demonstrate the new features in this release.
Visual Web Developer Express Edition only
This is a CTP and the only edition of Visual Studio that works for this release is Visual Web Developer Express. This means that you will only be able to author Web sites in Visual Studio. Nothing prevents you from building console applications or WinForms applications outside of Visual Studio and building them with MSBuild and a .NET Framework compiler, but you will not be able to work on those project types inside Visual Web Developer Express.
