TVUG Presentation - September 9th

Using the Entity Framework in .Net 3.5 SP1

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Speaker: Griffith Townsend, MCP.Net, MCSE
When: Tuesday September 9th, 2008 - 6:30-9PM
Where: VersaTrans Solutions, Latham, NY

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When developing multi-tiered applications, it’s not uncommon that to encounter code and architectural “noise” where a developer is forced to shift languages between the business logic layer and the data layer. The preference of many developers is the use of tools (typically Object Relational Mapping solutions) to abstract the database-specific aspects of the data layer into objects usable by the upper layers by object-oriented programming languages.

Microsoft’s long awaited Entity Framework (EF) is one approach to raise the level of abstraction in complex applications, separating the logical object schema from the underlying data store. EF allows developers a lot of flexibility in creating and mapping database entities, relationships, functions, and procedures into either direct class translations or custom business entities.

In this presentation, Griff Townsend introduces us to the Entity Framework as of its initial release in SP1, providing an architectural overview of EF, while also extending it into a working Data Layer. The presentation will also cover:

• Building your first EF model
• Using Stored Procedures and customizing business objects in the EF model
• Extending the Framework to support more robust data access
• LINQ to EF vs. LINQ to SQL
• Sharing Entities between layers