More Great TechEd News: Enum Support in Next Version of Entity Framework!!!

Just enjoyed a great session at TechEd “Microsoft ADO.NET Entity Framework 4 and Beyond: Building Real World Applications” presented by Jeff Derstadt (@jeffders) and Jonathan Aneja. Lots of cool stuff, great story of a real world upgrade from windows forms with datasets to Entity Framework and WPF, but it was the last 10 minutes of the session that had me running to my computer to blog! The next version of the Entity Framework will have full enum support . Just imagine simple things like writing a LINQ query which filters based on the enum value, instead of specifying “where rating = 1” and having to remember what exactly the number “1” maps to we’ll be able to write “where rating = ‘Awesome’”. Code will be more readable, more maintainable, easier to write, there will be peace throughout the land and no more world hunger. Okay maybe not those last two, but suffice to say this is good news for .NET developers. It is also a great reminder that the product teams do listen to you. Enum support was the most requested feature for the Entity Framework. They heard you, and they did it! Another feature you don’t want to overlook in the next version is support for Table Valued Functions. The Entity Framework team made me a happy camper today so this time My 5 is all about the Entity Framework!

My 5 Places to learn more about Entity Framework

1. The Entity Framework Developer Center – this site has great resources, tutorials for beginners and experienced programmers alike, forums for discussion, and the latest news.
2. The Entity Framework Feature Voting Site – you asked for enum you got it, tell the team what you want next!
3. The ADO.NET Team blog – Great place to get sneak peeks at what’s to come
4. The Entity Framework Design blog – Blogs often have the latest and greatest news.
5. TechEd Online – You can watch the video from this session yourself (not just yet, they do have to download it, so try next week, recordings are generally available 48 hours after the live session. Easiest way to find it is probably to search by speaker name (Jeff Derstadt or Jonathan Aneja)