Using LINQ to SQL in ASP.NET MVC2 project

Question

Well I am new to this ORM stuff. We have to create a large project. I read about LINQ to SQL. will it be appropriate to use it in the project of high risk. i found no problem with it personally but the thing is that there will be no going back once started.So i need some feedback from the ORM gurus here at the MSDN. Will entity framework will be better? (I am in doubt about LINK to SQL because I have read and heard negative feedback here and there)

I will be using MVC2 as the framework. So please give the feedback about LINQ to SQL in this regard.

Q2) Also I am a fan of stored procedure as they are precomputed and fasten up the thing and I have never worked without them.I know that LINQ to SQL support stored procedures but will it be feasible to give up stored procedure seeing the beautiful data access layer generated with little effort as we are also in a need of rapid development.

Q3) If some changes to some fields required in the database in LINK to SQL how will the changes be accommodated in the data access layer.

Answer 1

Hi Mazhar,

When it comes to Linq-to-Sql vs Entity Framework, I strongly suggest to use Entity Framework. With the release of .NET 4.0 and VS2010, Microsoft added soooo much goodness in Entity Framework(EF) 4.0. Let me just mention a few points: POCO and NTier support (this means that you can have a separate library with your simple entity classes and of course EF will still be aware of them), Lazy Loading, Sql query optimizations...Also you can let EF to generate your entities (and you have the option modify the T4 generation template) or you can create them by hand if you need more control. Also, if you app will indeed be large, with EF 4, now you can separate your layers quite nicely(you can create your Mocks fo testing etc...). I'm not a web developer, so I cannot give you any hints on mvc2 on this matter. q2-q3) - in EF you can have precompiled queries - IF you observer later on that query performance is not quite what you need. This will speed-up things quite a bit. If you plan to use EF and if you add a few changed to you database, you can easily update your model with a click. I know I babbled too much on EF and not Linq to sql :), but hey...I believe this suits way better on your needs and you should definitely check it out for this project. Also, I don't know how much Microsoft will add features / invest in LinqToSql in the future.

Cheers,

Answer 2

ok precompiled queries that certainly is catching my attention.