In Detail

The ADO.NET Entity Framework is a new way to build the data access layer of your Windows or web applications. It's an Object Relational Mapping (ORM) technology that makes it easy to tie together the data in your database with the objects in your applications, by abstracting the object model of an application from its relational or logical model.

This clear and concise book gets you started with the Entity Framework and carefully gives you the skills to speed up your application development by constructing a better data access layer. It shows you how to get the most from the ADO.NET Entity Framework to perform CRUD operations with complex data in your applications.

This tutorial starts out with the basics of the Entity Framework, showing plenty of examples to get you started using it in your own code. You will learn how to create an Entity Data Model, and then take this further with Entity types. You will also learn about the Entity Client data provider, learn how to create statements in Entity SQL, and get to grips with ADO.NET Data Services, also known as Project Astoria.

What you will learn from this book?

• Explore the features of the ADO.NET Entity Framework

• Understand the concepts of entities and their relationships

• Create an Entity Data Model using the ADO.NET Entity Data Model Designer as well as the EdmGen tool

• Get started with the Entity Framework and implement your application using it

• Extend the existing Entity Types to create your own Entity Types

• Write programs against the Entity Data Model to perform CRUD operations

• Explore ADO.NET Data Services and learn how they can be used with the Entity Framework

Approach

This book is written as a tutorial, leading you through examples to illuminate the main theory and get you working with the Entity Framework as quickly as possible.

Who this book is written for?

This book is for C# developers who want an easier way to create their data access layer. You will need to be comfortable with ADO.NET, but you don't need to know anything about the Entity Framework. Along the way we will create some ASP.NET applications, so being familiar with this will also help.

Amazon.com® Reader Reviews (Ranked by Helpfulness)

Average Amazon.com® Rating:  Based on 5 Ratings

Released too early - 2009-01-27
Reviewer Rating:
This book is loaded with inconsistencies, typos, and poor database design. Thats just to begin with - the author puts in alot of XML stuff (CSDL Schema, MSL Schema, SSDL Schema) as filler. It reminds me of my college days when we needed 20 more pages for a paper and we loaded it down with anything. Lets start with Chapter 1: page 30 displays the SQL Script to create the database - page 31 shows a database diagram. Just with those 2 pages (1) The script for the primary key for EmployeeID says its an INT .. all foreign keys in other tables for EmployeeID are using BIGINT .. the script will not run correctly! (2) The database diagram displays columns that are not in the script - where did they come from?!?!

Each chapter afterwards has its own problems, but this is a tutorial ... and the examples NEED to work!

Database a disaster - 2009-06-11
Reviewer Rating:
I agree with what others have said. The database download DOES NOT WORK. It contains no data, it is badly designed, and contains NO foreign key relationships at all. So, when you generate the Entity model, there are absolutely NO relationships between the generated classes. It makes it impossible to follow along.

I cannot believe that the single most important component of the whole book, the component that virtually every example relies upon, is unusable. DO NOT BUY THIS BOOK.

Don't buy this book. - 2009-05-31
Reviewer Rating:
As others have noted in their reviews - the code samples don't work and the book contains many code snippets that are either incomplete or just plain wrong. I was excited to get started with this, but have spent more time correcting the errors than I have learning EFM.

This book is an excercise in frustration. Save yourself the trouble, and buy something else.

Liked The Book But Disappointed With Sample Code - 2009-02-27
Reviewer Rating:
I was initially excited with this book as things seemed to be clearly explained in simple terms. Being a novice with with the Entity Framework, I cannot vouch for the accuracy of the material at this point. The big disappointment came when I downloaded the sample code and database which contained no data or entity relationships as illustrated in the book. I could not get the sample code to work. I wrote the publisher about this who alledgedly passed my concerns on to the author, but to date (about a month) I have received no reply.

Good one - 2009-01-14
Reviewer Rating:
Entity Framework is a difficult subject which is not intended for beginners and which uses several complex principles.
It becomes a quite difficult task to write a good explanation of this subject. The author, Joydip Kanjilal, has made a good attempt by explaining the fundamentals and core layers of Entity Framework in some depth. At the beginning, we are introduced to the meaning of each layer and how they interact with each other. After that, it becomes a little hard to digest because the author has chosen to paste hundreds and hundreds of lines of autogenerate XML code with little explanation.
This impression becomes more obvious when we have to follow instructions to create a trick using complex object relationships but without clear description of each step.

The book is definitely a good start if you want to discover the basis of Entity Framework. But to use it correctly and to benefit from what it has to say, it will require several readings and the reproduction of several examples step by step without changing any parameters. Besides, I think that this book will be too difficult for someone not having a good knowledge of Object-Relational Mapping.

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