Should the entity framework + self tracking entities be saving me time

Question

I've been using the entity framework in combination with the self tracking entity code generation templates for my latest silverlight to WCF application. It's the first time I've used the entity framework in a real project and my hope was that I would save myself a lot of time and effort by being able to automatically update the whole data access layer of my project when my database schema changed.

Happily I've found that to be the case, updating my database schema by adding a new table, changing column names, adding new columns etc. etc. can be propagated to my business object classes by using the update from database option on the entity framework model.

Where I'm hurting is the CRUD operations within my WCF service in response to actions on my Silverlight client. I use the same self tracking entity framework business objects in my Silverlight app but I find I'm continually having to fight against problems such as foreign key associations not being handled correctly when updating an object or the change tracker getting confused about the state of an object at the Silverlight end and the data access operation within the WCF layer throwing a wobbly.

It's got to a point where I have now spent more time dealing with this quirks than I have on my previous project where I used Linq-to-SQL as the starting point for rolling my own business objects.

Is it just me being hopeless or is the self tracking entities approach something that should be avoided until it's more mature?

Answer 1

Hi,

What version of self tracking entities are you using?

I'm using the .Net 4.0 version together with visual studio 2010. All CRUD operations work fine, also operation with FK.

I had problems in VS 2008 with FK but that's gone in VS 2010 with .Net 4.0.

If you want, I can provide you some samples.

Greetings

Answer 2

Is there a way to automatically include all navigation properties?

Answer 3

Since STE entity does not support lazy loading you should use Include on the server side include related properties. There is no way to include all related navigation properties. You have to explicitly include the properties. for instance //server side customer.Include("Orders.OrderDetails").Include("Address")