Part 1. Redefining your data-access strategy

Welcome to Entity Framework 4 in Action. Entity Framework is the O/RM tool that Microsoft introduced with .NET Framework 3.5 Service Pack 1 and has now updated to version 4.0. This book will enable you to use Entity Framework 4.0 to quickly build data-centric applications in a robust and model-driven way. If you’re an Entity Framework novice, you’ll learn how to create an application from scratch and build it correctly. If you’re an experienced Entity Framework developer, you’ll find lots of in-depth coverage that will improve your knowledge of this powerful tool.

The book is divided into four parts, and part 1 dives right into the fundamentals of Entity Framework. In chapter 1, you’ll discover what an O/RM tool is, and when and why it should be used. You’ll then learn about the modules that make up the Entity Framework architecture and how they interact with each other and with you.

Chapter 2 will show you how to build an application from scratch using Entity Framework. Here you’ll be introduced to the example application we’ll use throughout the book, and you’ll learn how to create its model and automatically generate code. In the last section, you’ll get an overview of how to read data from and persist data to a database.