The information in this post is out of date.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.

 

A few weeks ago we released EF5 Beta 1, since then we’ve been working to improve quality and polish up the release. Today we are making EF5 Beta 2 available on NuGet.

This release is licensed for use in production applications. Because it is a pre-release version of EF5 there are some limitations, see the license for more details.

 

What Changed Since Beta 1?

Beta 2 is mainly about improving quality, here are the more notable changes since Beta 1:

  • Migrations commands now work in Visual Studio 2010. There was a bug in Beta 1 that caused them to only work in Visual Studio 11 Beta.
  • Moved database related Data Annotations to System.ComponentModel.DataAnnotations.Schema namespace. The annotations that originally shipped in EntityFramework.dll have moved into System.ComponentModel.dll in .NET 4.5. As part of this move, the database related annotations were moved into a .Schema sub-namespace. In EF 5 we made the same namespace change for applications targeting .NET 4.0.
  • Fixed the ‘Sequence contains no elements’ bug that several users reported on Beta 1.
  • Simplified the web.config/app.config settings to register SQLEXPRESS or LocalDb as the default. We added a LocalDbConnectionFactory which makes the config that is created while installing the NuGet package much simpler. See the ‘Visual Studio 11 includes LocalDb rather than SQLEXPRESS.’ point in the next section for more details on how the default database is selected.
  • LocalDb database now created in App_Data directory of ASP.NET applications by default. The new LocalDbConnectionFactory will add LocalDb database files to the App_Data directory when used in ASP.NET applications.

 

EF Power Tools Beta 2 is Coming

Entity Framework has progressed a lot in the last 6 months and we’ve let the Power Tools fall behind. We are working on an updated version at the moment and we’re aiming to have it available in the next couple of weeks.

 

Simplified msdn.com/data/ef

We’ve been doing some work to simplify the main Entity Framework to make it a better starting point for our product. There is still plenty of room for improvement but you should find the site much more useful already.

 

What’s New in EF5?

EF 5 includes bug fixes to the 4.3.1 release and a number of new features. Most of the new features are only available in applications targeting .NET 4.5, see the Compatibility section for more details.

  • Enum support allows you to have enum properties in your entity classes. This new feature is available for Model, Database and Code First.
  • Table-Valued functions in your database can now be used with Database First.
  • Spatial data types can now be exposed in your model using the DbGeography and DbGeometry types. Spatial data is supported in Model, Database and Code First.
  • The Performance enhancements that we recently blogged about are included in EF 5 Beta 1.
  • Visual Studio 11 includes LocalDb database server rather than SQLEXPRESS. During installation, the EntityFramework NuGet package checks which database server is available. The NuGet package will then update the configuration file by setting the default database server that Code First uses when creating a connection by convention. If SQLEXPRESS is running, it will be used. If SQLEXPRESS is not available then LocalDb will be registered as the default instead. No changes are made to the configuration file if it already contains a setting for the default connection factory.

The following new features are also available in the Entity Model Designer in Visual Studio 11 Beta:

  • Multiple-diagrams per model allows you to have several diagrams that visualize subsections of your overall model.
  • Shapes on the design surface can now have coloring applied.
  • Batch import of stored procedures allows multiple stored procedures to be added to the model during model creation.

 

Getting Started

You can get EF 5 Beta 2 by installing the latest pre-release version of the EntityFramework NuGet package.

PM> Install-Package EntityFramework –Pre

 

These existing walkthroughs provide a good introduction to using the Code First, Model First & Database First workflows available in Entity Framework:

We have created walkthroughs for the new features in EF 5:

 

Compatibility

This version of the NuGet package is fully compatible with Visual Studio 2010 and Visual Studio 11 Beta and can be used for applications targeting .NET 4.0 and 4.5.

Some features are only available when writing an application that targets .NET 4.5. This includes enum support, spatial data types, table-valued functions and the performance improvements. If you are targeting .NET 4.0 you still get all the bug fixes and other minor improvements.

 

Support

We are seeing a lot of great Entity Framework questions (and answers) from the community on Stack Overflow. As a result, our team is going to spend more time reading and answering questions posted on Stack Overflow.

We would encourage you to post questions on Stack Overflow using the entity-framework tag. We will also continue to monitor the Entity Framework forum.

 

Entity Framework Team