Entity Framework and consuming a WCF service

Question

I'm getting data where the database is hidden behind a WCF service. Is it possible to use Entity Framework in a scenario where I have custom objects coming from a web service? (No access to the external database, and no current plans for insert/update/delete logic)

Starting with an empty EF model and adding an entity I get this error on compile: No mapping specified for instances of the EntitySet and AssociationSet in the EntityContainer ..

Is it possible to make an entity this way, and fill it with data received from an object? (In this case a WCF, but could also be a predefined model class/xml data)

If the web service retured a Customer object I could do something like this with a dataset: Make an unbound table and do a loop through the customer properties adding them to a temp row, add it with tbl_Customer.Addtbl_CustomerRow(customerRow) to get my view filled.

thanks, nakori

Answer 1

Entities are object representation of your DB entries (see Object-Relationnal Mapping; ORMs). Given Employee and SalesOrder, two hypothetical tables in a DB :

Entity: entities are instances of Entity Types (e.g. Employee, SalesOrder), which are richly structured records with a key. Entities are grouped in Entity-Sets.

Taken from the Modeling Data at the Conceptual Level of Abstraction: The Entity Data Model section of The ADO.NET Entity Framework Overview. Perhaps it is also a good read to start using the EF.

As for comm through WCF, it is kindof supported, such that entities are fully serializable/deserializable. You may also want to know that you can generate entities from an existing DB, theres a wizard and everything.