Once you click on the OK button, you will be back on to the “Choose Your Data Connection” window as shown below. Once you click on the Add button, it will open the Choose Data Model wizard as shown below. From this window select “EF Designer from database” and click on the Next button as shown in the below image.
Here, select the “EF Designer from database” option as we are going to use the Entity Framework Database First Approach. Once the database is ready, in the next step, create a new “Console Application” with the name EFDemo as shown in the below image. We want to display the data from both tables (Departments and Employees) in a console application as shown below. The version 4.3.1 was released on February 29, 2012.[10] There were a few updates, like support for migration.
Entity Framework – Overview
Once you click on the Next button, it will open Choose Your Database Objects as shown below. From the below window, select the “Departments” and “Employees” tables. Change the Model Namespace to “EmployeeModel” and click on the “Finish” button as shown in the below image. Once you click on the Next button, It will open choose your data connection wizard as shown below. From this window click on the New Connection button as shown in the below image. A third version of Entity Framework, version 4.1, was released on April 12, 2011, with Code First support.
In this scenario, the same context class is used to retrieve and save entities. These source-specific providers abstract the ADO.NET interfaces used to connect to the database while programming against the conceptual schema. It uses a command tree to translate standard SQL languages like LINQ into native SQL expressions, which it then executes on the given DBMS system. The Object Services layer includes the Object Context, representing the interaction session between the applications and the data source.
Entity Framework Development Approaches
Entity Framework is an Object Relational Mapper (ORM) which is a type of tool that simplifies mapping between objects in your software to the tables and columns of a relational database. The C# Entity Framework is a set of ADO.NET technologies that aid in developing data-driven software. C# Entity framework is an Object Relational Mapping (ORM) framework that gives developers an automated way to store and access databases. The Entity Framework allows developers to work with data at a higher level of abstraction.
Entity Framework will execute the relevant query in the database and then materialize results into instances of your domain objects for you to work within your app. That means the Entity Framework eliminates the need for writing the data-access code that developers usually need to write. As per the above figure, Entity Framework fits between the business entities (domain classes) and the database. Now your object directly works with the database to retrieve or make changes. The above diagram shows that the Entity Framework fits between the Data Layer and the database.
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It also reduces the code size of the data specific applications and also the readability of the code increases by using it. This is a new technology for accessing the data for Microsoft application. Entity Framework is an open-source ORM (Object Relational Mapping) Framework for the .NET applications supported by Microsoft. It enables the developers to work with the data using the objects of domain-specific classes without focussing on the database tables and columns where the data is stored. With the Entity Framework, developers can work at a higher level of abstraction when developers deal with the data. With the help of Entity Framework, we can create and maintain data-oriented applications with less code when compared with traditional applications.
- It eliminates the majority of the data-access code that developers must routinely write.
- EF simplifies mapping between objects in your software to the tables and columns of a relational database.
- In the code-first approach, EF Core API creates the database and tables using migration based on the conventions and configuration provided in your domain classes.
- With the help of Entity Framework, we can create and maintain data-oriented applications with less code when compared with traditional applications.
- When you save all the changes in your ORM to the database, the ORM will automatically generate insert/update/delete statements, based on what you did with the objects.
- In this article, I am going to give you a brief introduction to the Entity Framework.
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Features of Entity Framework
ADO.Net seems to refer directly to the technology for data sets and data tables. Entity Framework is Microsoft’s recommended data access technology for new applications. When an entity has the property of another type of entity property, it is called reference navigation property. EF API can map each entity to tables and each property of an entity to a column in the database. Internally, these E-SQL queries are converted to SQL queries that are data store dependent.
It supports many operations like update, create, and delete that are generated by the entity data model. This approach first targets a database that does not exist and then creates it. It allows the developers to define and make new models with C# and .NET classes. In the code-first approach, EF Core API creates the database and tables using migration based on the conventions and configuration provided in your domain classes. Here, you can observe we have created the connection object, created the data adapter object, and created Dataset, Data Tables, and DataView objects.
The following diagram illustrates where the Entity Framework fits into our application. A refresh of version 4.1, named Entity Framework 4.1 Update 1, was released on July 25, 2011. Most of the time you don’t have to write any SQL yourself, and iterating is very easy using your language built in functions. When you make any changes to the object, the ORM will usually detect this, and mark the object as ‘modified’. When you save all the changes in your ORM to the database, the ORM will automatically generate insert/update/delete statements, based on what you did with the objects. There are other ORMs in the marketplace such as NHibernate and LLBLGen Pro.
The fundamental purpose of the Object Context is to conduct various operations, such as adding and deleting instances of things and querying the database to save the modified state. Either way, Entity Framework works out how to move from your conceptual model to your database. So, you can query against your conceptual model objects and work directly with them. Entity Framework has a more granular mapping layer so you can customize mappings, for example, by mapping the single entity to multiple database tables or even multiple entities to a single table.
EF 6 Version History
E-SQL queries are converted to datastore-specific query languages like T-SQL via the Entity Framework (Transact SQL). This approach is an alternative for the code-first approach and the model-first approach. It creates the model and codes from the database in the project and connects them with the database and developer.
