Introducing .NET 4.0: with Visual Studio 2010

8.1. EF and LINQ to SQL

Some developers are understandably confused by the overlap between EF and LINQ to SQL. EF and LINQ to SQL were developed by two different teams—hence the overlap. LINQ to SQL is a great piece of technology and very suitable as a simple, lightweight wrapper to SQL. It is pretty clear, however, that Microsoft is pushing developers to use EF. This is a sensible (although no doubt irritating) move, as LINQ to SQL is fundamentally flawed as a generic ORM solution in that

• It only works with SQL Server.

• Generated classes must have a one-to-one relationship with database objects.

EF provides an abstraction above the database layer and a number of enhancements that make it superior to LINQ to SQL.

8.1.1. Is LINQ to SQL Dead?