Introducing the Entity Framework Power Tools

Write for InfoQ

The introduction of a Code First option in Entity Framework has received quite a bit of praise. While it still has a long way to go before it unseats the reigning ORM, nHibernate, the progress Microsoft is making is quite astounding. In order to keep the momentum up Microsoft is releasing a set of power tools that will take an existing database and create a Code First representation.

At first glance it seems rather odd to offer way to reverse engineer a database into a code-first model. But there really is a few useful ideas behind this. The first one is merely educational. Unlike the designer-driven workflows from previous versions of Entity Framework, Code First leaves you with a blank slate and no real clues on how to start. Developers can create part of their database first, or even just toy projects, and then use this tool to see what the matching Entity Framework classes should look like. From there they can build out the rest of the classes and then have it generate the full database schema.

Another interesting idea comes into play when you combine this with third-party databases and providers. You could, for example, use this to reverse engineer a SQL Server database and the recreate it in Oracle, MySQL, PostgreSQL or SQLite using Devart’s dotConnect libraries.

Currently the reverse engineering tool is available in EF Power Tools CTP1. Being just a preview, it only supports SQL Server and C#. To install, download it from the Visual Studio Gallery. You will also need to install EF 4.1 using NuGet.

Related Topics:

• Development
• Architecture & Design
• DevOps
• Infrastructure
• ADO.NET Entity Framework
• ORM
• .NET
• Data Access

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