Transparency in the design process

Entity Framework V2 - Transparency in the design process

ADO.NET team blog — Tue, 24 Jun 2008 05:03:01 GMT

Today marks the first day of engineering for the ADO.NET Entity Framework V2.0, and the team has been

re: Transparency in the design process

Serioga — Tue, 24 Jun 2008 10:30:28 GMT

Great news!

Will there be more bits for early download for MVPs?

Entity Framework 2.0 development starts today

.NET Brainwork — Tue, 24 Jun 2008 11:33:00 GMT

Entity Framework 2.0 development starts today

Entity Framework V2 day one

Michael Könings Blog — Tue, 24 Jun 2008 13:43:26 GMT

i think this and this is good news: MS takes a second try to make the ADO.NET Entity Framework a really

re: Transparency in the design process

Martin Laufer — Tue, 24 Jun 2008 17:11:55 GMT

Good news!

What do You mean with "FK like experiences in the model"?

What about payload attributes in relationships?

What about n-ary relationships (n <> 2)?

What about multi valued complex types?

What about static class members?

These are the things I would like to see in EF V2. No competitor (AFAIK) can provide such and realization of the former will make EF the "best in class".

What about the conceptional asymmetry between fetching (LINQ-like) and storing (procedural)?

What about the fact, that neither the class model nor the database schema can contain as much information as the conceptual model. So deriving the classes from the database (the only thing one has is a relation! hence the name) can't succede in general (what are entities, what are relationships, what are complex types, what are enums, where to get the behaviour). And deriving the db schema from the classes (where to store the static members, how to map inheritance) can't succede either without additional information.

The missing info is stored in the conceptual model (CM)! The only way to infer either classes and db schema is deriving both from the CM! Deriving the artifacts is a PROJECTION!

So please leave the straight (not to say trivial models, with convention over configuration) to "LINQ to SQL" and please provide a mature designer for the more complex scenarios, where one needs to store complex mapping which can't be derived from either artifact.

For updating the CM out of changed artifacts, please consider instrumenting the generated assemblies with the necessary info out of the CM and find a way to incorporate this info into the db (independent of vendor!). This may reduce the effect of the projection but leads to exposition of conceptional info to end users.

Thanks for Your patience.

Kind regards

Martin

re: Transparency in the design process

Jorriss — Tue, 24 Jun 2008 17:44:56 GMT

Of course this post leads to the question...When is EF v1 going to be released?

Initial POCO Design 1-Pager

Entity Framework Design — Tue, 24 Jun 2008 22:20:23 GMT

Here is a raw cut and paste for our POCO 1-Pager. We are currently working through the design and have

ADO.NET EF:...las novedades no paran!

Blog del CIIN — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 00:12:26 GMT

He comentado muchas veces que la velocidad de crucero que ha cogido Microsoft es imposible de seguir

re: Transparency in the design process

Nullable — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 02:11:17 GMT

I realize that this has been said a few times already, but this is a great step in the right direction for the Entity Framework and Microsoft in general.

I love the Astoria team blog, and now I have another favorite new blog to keep up with and hopefuly contribute to.

P.S. -> Lazy Loading via configuration FTW!

ADO.NET Entity Framework Vote of No Confidence

BlogCoward — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 05:17:32 GMT

ADO.NET Entity Framework Vote of No Confidence

re: Transparency in the design process

unbornchikken — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 07:02:59 GMT

Great news, great idea! Thank you!

I think the most important thing is to make the designer features equal to engine features. I wont use stuff in my real world application if I have to write a tons of imperspicuous XML code to have these.

A question: will EF v2 be part of .NET 4.0 or there will be an other .NET 3.5 SP release?

Regards,

Gabor Mezo

re: Transparency in the design process

timmall — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 07:58:19 GMT

General Responses:

>> Early Bits

Yes we will have early bits, outside of the CTP Rhythm. We are still working on the logistics. We will likely make these more broadly available via something like code gallery than restricting just to MVP's. We need to close on the details before makign any full commitment.

>> FK experiences

We are working on being able to reason about 1-way references instead of bi-directional references. We will drop design notes on this once we have something people can throw darts at

>> More relationships (n-ary, rel'ns with payload...)

We have been looking at these, they were part of the original data model but cut due to schedule and priority. In the fullness of time we will add these. I am not sure that they will land in V2 as a lot of the focus will be on the types of things outlined in the post.

>> assymetry between fetching and storing....

Not sure what this meant.

>> designer

Yes we need to work on the designer. Yes, the transformation from the classes to the model and from the model to the store are projections. That is a key foundation upon which many of our services will be built in the future.

re: Transparency in the design process

lowendahl — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 11:23:08 GMT

I would love to be able to apply cross-cutting concerns like validation and behavior to the objects returned from a query. Either by letting me hook the materialization and return objects configured by spring.net or the enterprise library or any other solution that would allow me to choose strategies for those cross-cutting concerns.

I would also like a template based experience for the designer, where one could create code templates used to generate the classes from the c-model. Something similar to what Roger Alsing is doing for NPersist: http://rogeralsing.com/2008/06/19/caramel-alpha-source-code-is-public/

That would be awesome :)

Entity Framework Petition of Vote of Non Confidence

Peter Ritchie's MVP Blog — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 20:40:54 GMT

I had intended to be happy simply being a signatory of ADO .NET Entity Framework Vote of No Confidence

re: Transparency in the design process

Peter Ritchie — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 20:45:12 GMT

This is fabulous news. Thanks!

I'm not a real world developer

Chad Myers' Blog — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 15:44:18 GMT

I made the mistake recently of reading some of the responses to the 'Entity Framework Vote of No

re: Transparency in the design process

jeffders — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 18:20:25 GMT

>> Cross-cutting concerns like validation

Adding more extensibility points to the object layer so that developers have more extensibility hooks is definitely an area we are looking into for v2.

>> Designer Templates

This is also something we are working towards. There are just too many code generation options to support without templates.

Jeff Derstadt

Developer

Entity Framework Team

Computed Properties One Pager

Entity Framework Design — Sat, 28 Jun 2008 02:47:04 GMT

If you've been paying attention to what the Entity Framework team has been saying. You will remember

ADO.NET Entity Framework ja veel midagi

Iga lahendus tekitab uusi probleeme ehk alati võib leida veel ühe bugi. — Tue, 01 Jul 2008 11:48:57 GMT

.Net -i arendajate kommuuni poolt on postitatud väga asjalik "Vote of no confidence" artikkel ADO.NET

Fim de ano fiscal, planejamento FY09 e a vida na Microsoft

LUTI @ Microsoft — Tue, 01 Jul 2008 16:07:25 GMT

No início do ano eu postei um artigo chamado 2008 – O ano para alavancar sua carreira , que foi muito

Showing some support for LINQ to SQL

Ian Cooper [MVP] — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 16:01:22 GMT

While I have finished my series on LINQ to SQL I wanted to talk about some of the reaction. In his summary

Showing some support for LINQ to SQL

Community Blogs — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 22:37:33 GMT

While I have finished my series on LINQ to SQL I wanted to talk about some of the reaction. In his summary

re: Transparency in the design process

rogerj — Sun, 06 Jul 2008 20:31:36 GMT

I see no mention of adding DML features to eSQL in v2. Having to execute INSERT, UPDATE, and DELETE commands out-of-band in the provider's SQL dialect will discourage use of the EDM in non-OO applications.

--rj

re: Transparency in the design process

dsimmons@microsoft.com — Mon, 07 Jul 2008 03:27:38 GMT

Thanks for the feedback Roger. Yes, we are aware of the value of this feature. Unfortunately, as we look at the list of all the things that we need to do in v2 and relative priorities, it's already pretty apparent that this will have to wait for v3. DML support in both eSQL and LINQ is important, but it is a very large set of work.

- Danny

Entity Framework v2.0 development underway (and very open!)

Eric and the .NET Framework — Tue, 08 Jul 2008 16:31:17 GMT

The ADO.NET Entity Framework is very strategic to Microsoft - but a) it is a V1.0 technology (although

Transparent Caching Support in the Entity Framework

Entity Framework Design — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 23:52:17 GMT

The Entity Framework's provider model makes it possible for it to work over different database's. The

Using Stored Procedures to load structured data.

Entity Framework Design — Mon, 21 Jul 2008 20:18:11 GMT

V1 of the Entity Framework allows you to use stored procedures in two main ways: Mapping Create, Update

Discussion about API changes necessary for POCO:

Entity Framework Design — Fri, 01 Aug 2008 19:26:47 GMT

Evolving an API to support new requirements, like POCO, while maintaining backward compatibility is challenging.

Structural Annotations - One Pager

Entity Framework Design — Tue, 12 Aug 2008 22:57:39 GMT

In V1 of the Entity Framework it is possible to annotate a schema using attributes declared in another

re: Transparency in the design process

Sigurd Decroos — Sat, 30 Aug 2008 00:45:23 GMT

Well, I've tried Ideablade's DevForce EF, it is already much more advanced than EF v1 and probably more than EF v2 will be. How difficult can it be for big Microsoft to develop a real enterprise solution with code-generator, model designers, best practices and patterns... everything combined. MM.Net from Mere Mortals, CSLA.Net, DevForce from IdeaBlase, ... They are all much more advanced than everything MS has to offer nowadays. And please, don't talk me about EntLib 4. It doesn't have the designers and felixibility 3rd party vendors has. You want a good example, look as XAF from DevExpress and where they are heading... I'm sorry, I don't believe in this v2 so fast, it will take months before the 'final' version is released and it will be dropped in the next year or 2. Adopt CSLA.Net or XPO or so, make a superb generator, wizard thingy for it with perfect N-tier samples. Then we, developers, would have something to rely on for more than 2 or 3 years.

Model First

Entity Framework Design — Thu, 11 Sep 2008 01:14:05 GMT

One of the most painful omissions from the Entity Framework V1 was Model First, which basically means

EDM and Store functions exposed in LINQ

Entity Framework Design — Wed, 08 Oct 2008 20:05:33 GMT

In this post Colin Meek and Diego Vega delve into some enhancements we are planning that to LINQ to Entities,

EDM and Store functions exposed in LINQ

Entity Framework Design — Wed, 08 Oct 2008 20:09:13 GMT

In this post Colin Meek and Diego Vega delve into some enhancements we are planning that to LINQ to Entities,

re: Transparency in the design process

Jonathon Cebula — Fri, 17 Oct 2008 15:58:14 GMT

Three key things are missing from the entity framework for me, you can work around then with a bit of coding but for me these are important for a project to be expandable and for the EF to become very flexible.

First, Model inheritance, you should be able to create models that inherit from other models and can have associations with objects from other models. This would be usefull for applications that use a common base database and build on this structure.

Second, Xml datatype.

Third, dynamic columns in tables.

re: Transparency in the design process

girolo — Fri, 17 Oct 2008 16:15:55 GMT

It would be great if we could known what kind of WCF Service API would be choosen to re-attach a graph of entities in a 3-tiers dettached scenario. So we could already use this API with a custom implementation and switch to EFv2 implementation latter without changing the API.

For example, is the API will looks like EntityBag<T> API ?

It will also be great if the API would not be too "Microsoft" oriented but rather technology agnostic so we could use it in an interrop scenario between a JAVA Server/.NET Client OR .NET Server/ JAVA Client

re: Transparency in the design process

Moon — Sun, 19 Oct 2008 22:19:50 GMT

I'm pretty sure you know very well that ,

Foreign Keys in the Conceptual and Object Models

Entity Framework Design — Tue, 28 Oct 2008 03:33:33 GMT

If you are reading this, you have probably heard by now about the so called impedance mismatch between

N-Tier Improvements for Entity Framework

Entity Framework Design — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 22:22:28 GMT

The first version of Entity Framework provides convenient ways to load, manipulate and persist objects

Pluralization

Entity Framework Design — Tue, 02 Dec 2008 22:44:06 GMT

Unfortunately in the current version of the Entity Framework, which ships in .NET 3.5 SP1, we don't make

re: Transparency in the design process

Andrea Bianchi — Thu, 04 Dec 2008 13:10:43 GMT

good news this blog.

we waiting v2 early.

good job.

Model Defined Functions

Entity Framework Design — Fri, 09 Jan 2009 04:55:41 GMT

Today the Entity Framework, and more specifically the Entity Data Model, have a limited notion of Functions.

Update on Computed Properties

Entity Framework Design — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 07:27:44 GMT

A while back I wrote a post that introduced the concept of Computed Properties . Since that time we’ve

Customizing Entity Classes in VS 2010

Entity Framework Design — Thu, 22 Jan 2009 22:47:23 GMT

When VS 2010 ships it will include some significant improvements to our code generation story for the

Problem with Large Models in Entity Framework (and LINQ to SQL)

Eric's Blog — Wed, 18 Feb 2009 09:50:59 GMT

After a year of working with LINQ to SQL, I strongly belivev that LINQ to SQL and Entity Framework (EF)

Foreign Keys in the Entity Framework

Entity Framework Design — Mon, 16 Mar 2009 23:47:43 GMT

Background A number of months ago we asked whether Foreign Keys (FKs) in Conceptual and Object models

Self-Tracking Entities in the Entity Framework

Entity Framework Design — Tue, 24 Mar 2009 04:51:13 GMT

Background One of the biggest pieces of feedback we received from the N-Tier Improvements for Entity

re: Transparency in the design process

Courtois — Fri, 17 Apr 2009 18:54:29 GMT

a nice feature will be working with several edmx:

entity1 map in in file1.edmx can inherit from entity2 map in file2.edmx.

So you can work with several models !

Code Only

Entity Framework Design — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 23:06:49 GMT

There are currently two ways to get Entity Framework apps up and running, we call these Database First

re: Transparency in the design process

Nabil Sedoud — Fri, 31 Jul 2009 21:28:37 GMT

I make a test for this Walkthrough by using code only Context, and i receive this error "underlying connection was closed: The connection was closed unexpectedly"

I think that there is an incompatobility when use T4 SelftTracking with CodeOnly approche.

unfortunately for us, it's an other limitation of EF

re: Transparency in the design process

Daniel Simmons — Fri, 31 Jul 2009 21:51:57 GMT

Could you please share the code that you tried either here or by sending email to dsimmons@microsoft.com?

These two features are not intended to be incompatible, and if there is some issue we will certainly fix it before final release.

- Danny

re: Transparency in the design process

Nabil Sedoud — Fri, 31 Jul 2009 23:14:20 GMT

Think you Daniel,

I made some diagnostics, and I suspect that the problem lies in the client side when reading the response message. "HandleReturnMessage Void (System.Runtime.Remoting.Messaging.IMessage ....."

I make the query to the model directly from a console application and it works correctly.

The service also works correctly in this case:

public Post GetPostWithComments(int postID)

{

var builder = new ContextBuilder<BloggingStoreContext>();

builder.RegisterKey((Entry c) => c.ID);

builder.RegisterKey((Person p) => p.ID);

builder.RegisterKey((Blog b) => b.ID);

SqlConnection connection = new SqlConnection(@"Data Source=LAB\SQLEXPRESS;Initial Catalog=BloggingCode;Integrated Security=SSPI;MultipleActiveResultSets=True;");

using (var context = builder.Create(connection))

{

if (!context.DatabaseExists())

context.CreateDatabase();

Post post = context.Entries.OfType<Post>().Include("Comments").SingleOrDefault(e => e.ID == postID);

Post copy = new Post(); //Just for test succesfull returned object

copy.Title = post.Title;

return copy;

}

but I receice an error "underlying connection was closed: The connection was closed unexpectedly" when make this test

public Post GetPostWithComments(int postID)

{

var builder = new ContextBuilder<BloggingStoreContext>();

builder.RegisterKey((Entry c) => c.ID);

builder.RegisterKey((Person p) => p.ID);

builder.RegisterKey((Blog b) => b.ID);

SqlConnection connection = new SqlConnection(@"Data Source=LAB\SQLEXPRESS;Initial Catalog=BloggingCode;Integrated Security=SSPI;MultipleActiveResultSets=True;");

using (var context = builder.Create(connection))

{

if (!context.DatabaseExists())

context.CreateDatabase();

return context.Entries.OfType<Post>().Include("Comments").SingleOrDefault(e => e.ID == postID);

}

I will send you the refactored files.

Nabil