Living in the Tech Avalanche Generation

This is the final part of the series on using IronPython together with the Entity Framework.

Part 1.0

In this first instalment we setup the discussion on what we were trying achieve, how to use the __clrtype__ class in IronPython 2.6 to create PODO’s (Plain Old Dlr Objects) ala POCO, for integration with the Entity Framework. Our aim is to use the Entity Framework using the Beta 2 of Entity Framework 4.0.

Part 2.0

We dig in deep and explore the internals of what’s required to create a PODO (POCO for the DLR). We also build an IronPython ObjectContext and determine how to manage mapping between the Entities and Database. We achieve a successful test run and prove that we can in simple cases get IronPython and Entity Framework to worth together in this fashion. Finally in part 2.0 we take steps to verify lazy loading for an entity graph and we strike our first hurdle, leaving us to look forward to part 3 to see if the problems encountered might be overcome.

Part 3.0

We start to examine the issues with scalar / native types and see how proxies fit into the puzzle. We check out eager loading and whilst we do have some success we still face a problem in rounding out the whole story. Finally we prepare to journey into debugging a crash dump file for part 4.

Part 4.0

Using Visual Studio 2010 we successfully load up our crash dump file in the hope of jumping over the final hurdle. We discover that the specialized version of IronPython 2.6 does not have publicly available debug symbols but we can manage to see where the active thread was when the fatal crash occurred.

The State of Play

The current set of problems unfortunately leaves us short in terms of using the Entity Framework from IronPython, however I did previously demonstrate (in two parts here and here) how this can be achieved by way of introducing an interop layer with C# addressing the Entity Framework.

Part 1.0

Part 2.0

Part 3.0

Part 4.0

It’s my hope that this post will make the previous posts easier to find given my recent problems with a blog scraping site. Finding the original content has been difficult in light of my successfully having the scraping site in question remove my content.