Foreword

I spend a lot of my time here at Microsoft thinking about complexity—and asking myself lots of questions. My guess is that you do the same.

When we design code, we ask ourselves questions such as these: Can I make this code more readable? Can I write this loop with fewer lines? Can I factor out behavior into a separate class? Can I architect this system so that it is more cohesive?

When we design user interfaces, we ask similar questions: Are we asking the user to make too many decisions? Did we lay out this UI in the clearest possible way? Can we make error states clearer and easier to avoid?

When we design systems, we ask other questions: How many concepts must the user learn? Do those concepts map to things the user knows and cares about? Does everything hang together in a clear, sensible, consistent way?

I think about these things a lot. But first I’d like to answer another question that I often get asked: Just how complicated is the Entity Framework? The answer is, that it depends on what you want to do with it.

To see how simple the Entity Framework is, let’s spend five minutes making it jump through a simple set of hoops. You’ll need Visual Studio 2010 (the Express editions will work) and SQL Server (again, the Express editions will work just fine). In SQL Server, create a database called “EntityFrameworkIsSimple.”

1.  Launch Visual Studio 2010.

2.  From the View menu, select Server Explorer.