Entity Framework Links #4

This is the fourth post in a regular series to recap interesting articles, posts and other happenings in the EF world.

Entity Framework 6

Since our last EF Links post we announced the availability of EF6 Alpha 3. Of particular note, this preview introduced support of mapping to insert/update/delete stored procedures with Code First and connection resiliency to automatically recover from transient connection failures

There were a number of blog posts about new features coming in EF6:

We also shared some changes we are planning to make to custom conventions to improve this new feature. These changes will be included in a future preview.

Entity Framework 5

Julie Lerman appeared on Visual Studio Toolbox sharing Entity Framework tips and tricks. She also released a Getting Started with Entity Framework 5 course on Pluralsight

Rowan Miller published a two part series about extending and customizing Code First models at runtime (Part 1, Part 2).

EF Power Tools

We announced Beta 3 of the EF Power Tools. We also shared plans to provide a single set of tooling for EF, which means we won't be releasing an RTM version of the Power Tools. However, we will continue to maintain Beta releases of the Power Tools until the functionality becomes available in a pre-release version of the primary EF tooling.

Comments

  • Anonymous
    March 25, 2013
    Does anyone know if support for full-text search for SQL Server is planned be added to Entity Framework?

  • Anonymous
    March 30, 2013
    Why should it be so complicated to use sql server and entity framework in Windows 8 Apps ? An application without data is not an app after all. I guess this is what is holding Windows 8 apps from kicking off. Why can I use SQLite in Windows 8 apps and not SQL Express ? Ridiculous.

  • Anonymous
    April 03, 2013
    @Jon - There is no native support for full-text search planned at the moment. You would need to use a raw SQL query msdn.microsoft.com/.../jj592907.

  • Anonymous
    April 03, 2013
    @Windows 8 - We're going to be investigating what it would take to get EF to run for Windows Store apps, you can vote on the feature here - entityframework.codeplex.com/.../403

  • Anonymous
    May 01, 2013
    Can you please update on the status of the Databae-First part of the EF?

  • Anonymous
    May 02, 2013
    @Konstantin Tarkus - We're getting ready to release the next preview at the moment and it will include the updated EF Designer with EF6 support. I don't have an exact date for the next preview, we'll ship it as soon as it's ready :).

  • Anonymous
    May 10, 2013
    Any ideas (even very approximately) when EF6 will be considered RTM. We're about to start a conversion project and I'm wondering if we should wait for EF6 or go with EF5

  • Anonymous
    May 10, 2013
    @David Hayes - Final RTM will be with the next version of Visual Studio (we don't have dates for that). Regardless of the RTM date we will have a release with a go-live license later this year.

  • Anonymous
    August 27, 2013
    How about a fifth installment in this series?

  • Anonymous
    August 28, 2013
    @ErikEJ - Thanks for the reminder... it has been a while. I will put one together.

  • Anonymous
    July 22, 2014
    I'm really tired of adding my functions/attributes to the model classes every time I  regenerate them and I cannot find decent information about how/where to store them in partial classes. I hope this is the right forum for this and any kind of help would be greatly appreciated.

  • Anonymous
    August 04, 2014
    @Doug - The generated classes are 'partial', so you can add another code file that contains the same class name in the same namespace and the compiler will combine the two files. Because it's a separate file, the EF Designer won't touch it. Here is an example of using this functionality to add annotations in a buddy class - hartzer.wordpress.com/.../mvc-buddy-class. You can also add your own methods etc. to the partial class that you add.