Programming Entity Framework

Chapter 23. The Entity Framework, Today and Tomorrow

Microsoft’s data strategy is solidly focused on conceptual models. The Entity Framework is the tool for .NET developers to build applications that leverage these models. Yet version 1 is only the first step toward Microsoft’s larger vision for a very robust set of capabilities. In this book, you learned how to use the features in version 1 to build applications, and you gained a good understanding of the plumbing of the Entity Framework so that you can overcome some of the limitations of this version.

Microsoft has listened very closely to the developer community and has started to show publicly the features it is implementing in the next version, which will be part of the next Visual Studio release. Microsoft continues to work with the community and encourages our feedback in helping to shape this next version.

In the meantime, the company has been putting together samples of how to achieve some of the capabilities that are targeted for the next version, as well as code you can use to extend the Entity Framework’s current features.

In this chapter, we’ll take a brief look at a few lingering questions regarding the Entity Framework, the version 1 toolkits that Microsoft has been sharing, and some of what’s coming in the next version, which will be part of Visual Studio 2010 and .NET 4.0.

What About Building Reports with the Entity Framework?

We did not discuss reporting in this book because there is not much to share. In Windows Forms, ...