ADO.NET Entity Framework Unleashed

Product Author Bios

Craig Lee is Senior Development Lead at Microsoft for the team that created the Entity Designer that ships with Microsoft Visual Studio. He has more than fifteen years of database experience as a consultant, technical trainer, software architect, and developer. Craig has been involved in developing multiple software products, many of them Business Intelligence products with their own specialized data access layers.

This is the most complete and practical reference to developing data applications with Microsoft's powerful new ADO.NET Entity Framework (EF) 2.0. Author Craig Lee is singularly well-qualified: he is the Microsoft product manager who led the team that created the version of Entity Designer that will ship with the next version of Visual Studio. Here, he shares all the inside knowledge you need to maximize you productivity with EF 2.0 - including powerful tips and tricks that have never been published outside Microsoft before. You will understand the "why" of EF 2.0, not just the "how", as you walk through the entire lifecycle of an EF application, and learn how to integrate EF into your development processes. Lee begins by introducing EF's vision, clearly describing its architecture, and showing how EF connects with Microsoft's exciting Linq technology. He thoroughly illuminates the process of Entity Data Modeling; shows how to work with the Entity Designer and create effective mappings; and walks through creating databases from models. He demonstrates the use of Visual Studio to create EF applications, covering topics ranging from data binding to source code control, packaging, and deployment. The book's comprehensive coverage of programming EF 2.0 includes detailed discussions of providers, code generation, object services, performance tuning, tools, best practices, and much more - including advanced topics covered in no other book.

Table of Contents

Introduction
1. The Entity Data Model Vision
2. Entity Framework Architecture
3. Linq To SQL and the Entity Framework
4. What's New in Visual Studio 2010?

Part I. Entity Data Modeling
5. "Hello World" for the Entity Framework
6. "Hello World" using Visual Studio
7. Working with the Entity Designer
8. Extending Your Model
9. Mapping Basics
10. Association Mapping
11. Advanced Entity Mapping
12. Keeping the Model Current
13. Creating a Database from the Model

Part II. Visual Studio and the Entity Framework
14. Data Binding
15. Connection String Management
16. Working with Visual Studio's Project Systems
17. Dynamic Data Entities
18. Source Code Control
19. Packaging and Deployment

Part III. Programming the Entity Framework
20. Entity Framework Providers
21. Entity Client and Entity SQL
22. Generating Code from the Model
23. Object Services
24. LINQ to Entities
25. ADO.NET Data Services
26. Tuning Database Performance

Part IV. Advanced Topics
27. Entity Framework Best Practices
28. EF Tools in the .NET Framework
29. Entity Framework Model Files
30. Custom DDEX and EF Providers
31. Moving from L2S to EF