Saturday, July 14, 2012

ADO.NET Entity Framework

Entity Framework

What is Entity Framework?
                It is an Object/Relational mapping framework which helps/ enables developers to work with relational data as an domain specific objects.

What it exactly Mean:
 Suppose a developer needs to write a code to create/ edit and delete and customer information, he creates stored procedures in the database, and he writes the code to calls this procedures with relevant parameters.

If he needs to support more than one database, they need to write different code (database specific) to execute these stored procedures.

What if suppose we have option to access different database with single set of code and also no need to worry much about database connectivity and access??....... That’s what entity framework does.

Since the entity framework integrated with LINQ, we (developer) can issue all queries in the code to do the database operation.  With these features we can now concentrate more on writing business logic instead of spending time on relational data.

Since the entity framework built on ado.net provider model, with existing provider being updated additively to support this entity framework, the developer can easily migrate/ upgrade the application built on asp.net to entity framework.

Some of the Capabilities of Entity Framework:

a.       It supports major database servers.

b.      It can handle real-world database schemas and Stored procedures

c.       Its visual studio integrated features provides option to generate models automatically.

d.      It is integrated with asp.net, WCF, WPF and WCF data services

Some of the high level benefits:

a.       Reduces the development time spending on database access

b.      No need to write different database access code for different databases

c.       Database object schema can be changed without doing changes in the code
Architecture of Entity Framework:

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