Entity Framework - Learning Materials recommended.
To date the best first up learning materials I have come across for EF have been the DNR TV web casts with Dan Simmons and Julia Lerman’s tutorials which I posted a PDF consolidation of recently. Dan Simmons gives some very good rudimentary ‘meet the Entity Framework’ demonstrations and I am beginning to quickly feel at home with EF. Having said that I will add my initial observations on the product so far (bear in mind I was a huge fan of LINQ To SQL).
- A better and more functional designer experience than LINQ to SQL
- Lacks the POCO ability that I crave (perhaps in V 2.x something)
- I like having the ability to map single entities to multiple tables, which LINQ To SQL could not do.
- Curiously, I have found that EF supports rapid development scenarios with an extremely similar approach to that of LINQ To SQL, therefore the argument to use LINQ TO SQL if your in a ‘hurry’ doesn’t really stack up for me anymore and I am questioning the validity of that proposal altogether.
Find the DNR TV episodes here:
To get more deeply into the product I just now ordered Julia’s book which I will have to wait till Jan 2009 for but there’s plenty to do whilst waiting, I am going to have a go at getting the specification pattern working with the Entity Framework as I did with LINQ to SQL previously and think about how to deal nicely with Fetching Strategies in EF.
