ADO.NET team blog : Entity Framework Feature CTP1 for .NET 4.0

Upcoming ADO.Net Entity Framework Feature Community Technology Preview for Visual Studio 2010 Beta 2

dpblogs — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 00:42:03 GMT

Just a quick note to let everyone know we’re actively working on an updated Feature CTP for Visual Studio 2010 Beta 2. As soon as the bits are ready we’ll release and post here again. Currently the plan is to include some great new enhancements for Code Only and Self-Tracking Entities with the bits.

Please be patient & stay tuned!

Thanks!
The Entity Framework Team

Feature CTP Walkthrough: Code Only for Entity Framework

dpblogs — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 00:58:00 GMT

Overview

This post covers a new Entity Framework extension called Code Only. Code Only allows you to use the Entity Framework using POCO entities and without an EDMX file, i.e. with ‘Code Only’. This walkthrough shows you how to use the first release of Code Only, which is a very early and limited preview of our long term plans for Code Only. To get an idea of where Code Only is heading look at this post on the EF Design Blog.

Code Only ships as part of the Microsoft Entity Framework Feature CTP 1. The CTP works on top of the latest version of the Entity Framework released as part of .NET 4.0 Beta1, and you can download it here.

Requirements

This walkthrough requires Visual Studio 2010 Beta 1
The Microsoft Entity Framework Feature CTP1, that can be downloaded from here.
A local SQL Server 2008 Express instance has to be installed as SQLEXPRESS. Otherwise, changes to the connection string in the web.config file or regenerating the database from the included SQL scripts may be necessary.
Download and extract the initial solution attached to this post.

Feature CTP Walkthrough: POCO Templates for Entity Framework

dpblogs — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 00:38:00 GMT

Overview

This post covers a new Entity Framework extension called POCO Templates. POCO Templates is a T4 template and associated include files, that allow you to generate POCO classes or Plain Old CLR Objects for use with the Entity Framework. T4 templates are used because T4 makes it easy to customize your Entities.

POCO Templates ship as part of the Microsoft Entity Framework Feature CTP 1. The CTP works on top of the latest version of the Entity Framework released as part of .NET 4.0 Beta1, and you can download it here.

Requirements

This walkthrough requires Visual Studio 2010 Beta 1
The Microsoft Entity Framework Feature CTP1, that can be downloaded from here.
A local SQL Server 2008 Express instance has to be installed as SQLEXPRESS. Otherwise, changes to the connection string in the web.config file or regenerating the database from the included SQL scripts may be necessary.
Download and extract the initial solution attached to this post.

Feature CTP Walkthrough: Self Tracking Entities for Entity Framework

dpblogs — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 23:16:00 GMT

Overview

The goal of the following walkthrough is to demonstrate a basic scenario for the use of Self Tracking Entities with Entity Framework. Self Tracking Entities is a feature included in the Microsoft Entity Framework Community Technology Preview 1, which consists of a new API added to the ObjectContext and ObjectSet classes (implemented as extension methods for the Feature CTP) and a code-generation template based on Text Template Transformation Toolkit (T4) technology included in Visual Studio.

Self Tracking Entities are domain classes that do not have any dependency on Entity Framework but include mechanisms that allow them to track changes on scalar and complex property values, references and collections within themselves, independently of the Entity Framework.

The first scenario we are trying to address with Self Tracking Entities is one in which a WCF service exposes a series of operations that return entity graphs, then a client application can manipulate that graph and submit the modifications to a service operation that validates and performs the updates to a database store using Entity Framework.

Requirements

This walkthrough requires Visual Studio 2010 Beta 1
The Microsoft Entity Framework Feature CTP1, that can be downloaded from here.
A local SQL Server 2008 Express instance has to be installed as SQLEXPRESS. Otherwise, changes to the connection string in the web.config file or regenerating the database from the included SQL scripts may be necessary.
Download and extract the initial solution attached to this post.

Announcing: Entity Framework Feature CTP 1

dpblogs — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 22:07:00 GMT

Today we are announcing the availability of the Microsoft Entity Framework Feature CTP 1 for the .NET Framework 4.0 Beta 1. You can download the Feature CTP 1 from here. This Feature CTP enables a number of scenarios that we've mentioned on the blog previously and now have a set of walk throughs for everybody to start playing with the features:

1) Better N-Tier Support with Self Tracking Entities

2) POCO (Plain Old CLR Objects) entity code generation via the POCO Template

3) Writing only code and having it work with the Entity Framework via Code Only.

We weren’t able to ship these capabilities in the .NET Framework 4.0 Beta 1 so we’ve decided to release them alongside the Beta. This CTP is an early preview of these features and as such we’re looking for lots of feedback on these components. This functionality is currently not scheduled to be part of the .NET Framework 4.0 and we expect to release another CTP of these features based on the feedback we get from you. Make sure to enter bugs via Microsoft Connect for the Visual Studio 2010 & .NET Framework 4.0 Beta located here. You can also discuss them in the forum for the Entity Framework 4.0 Beta.

Carl Perry
Program Manager, Entity Framework