You all know that I’ve blogged quite a bit about LINQ2SQL. That technology has saved me a huge amount of programming effort verses using ado.net directly. We all know that LINQ2SQL is really just a stepping stone to Entity Framework (EF), though Microsoft doesn’t quite say that. I’m sure, based on how many people are using LINQ2SQL, it will live on and be supported for quite sometime. Personally, I’ve been waiting for EF to become more mature and then, I assume I’ll start all my new projects with it (EF) and slowly migrate my old ones from LINQ2SQL to EF. So, time for me to start taking EF more seriously. It’s baked into the upcoming .net 4.0 and Visual Studio 2010 beta 2. It’s obviously not done, but from what I’ve seen, when .net 4.0 releases, EF will be ready for prime time.
Now, for the review:
Julie does a great job of introducing Entity Framework and explaining where it fits in, and why you should consider using it. I was already sold, but now I understand better why. She then does an excellent job of going through the basics of EF, telling you how to use it, describing the model and all the details necessary to begin using it. One of the nice features of this book, is it goes beyond the theoretical, and talks about specific implementations. That is, WCF, WPF, etc.
We all need to get more comfortable with EF and this book is a great starting place. Julie Lerman is clearly the person to learn this from. I strongly recommend it.
| Programming Entity Framework |