If I didn't get along with Entity Framework until now, Is there a chance I will like the new EF in .Net 4.0

Question

So far I did not like EF. Although I liked the tools and how easy it was to create certain types of mappings and relations, Other types were a pain and the Linq support in EF wasn't so great (couln't create my own filter extension methods).

Is the new EF in .Net 4.0 better. Given what I have stated so far is there a chance I will like it.

The reson I ask this is because I use linq2sql a lot and do not like the feeling that the platform I am using is about to go obsolete. I would like to upgrade to something that is as similar as possible to what I already have.

Thanks for your opinions

Answer 1

It's only an opinion, but I believe that the new EF will be much improved. They will almost certainly have some kind of migration path from Linq to SQL. Whether it will look like Linq to SQL is another story. The two tools have somewhat different philosophies.

While EF will be designed for enterprise scenarios, it is my hope that the next version will still be lightweight enough to serve as an adequate replacement for L2S in small application scenarios.

Answer 2

I am really optimistic about EF 4.0 from all that I have seen thus far. The beta release is already available to MSDN subscribers and it addresses a lot of the concerns around POCO, Persistence Ignorance, N-Tier support and all that. I continue to recommend reading the ADO.NET team blog as a great resource for what's changed.

You can't compare it to the first release because this is a very big overhaul and a lot has changed.

That said, initial adopters always get the worst of it because they are the first to run into bugs and new problems while the late comes can benefit from the lessons learnt by the early adopters.

Answer 3

There has been a lot of improvements. I have ran in to a couple of strange issues but nothing unsolvable yet. It took me a few hours to understand how POCO works meaning they spent a lot of. I recommend you download VS2010 and play around with it yourself!

Answer 4

Have a look at this presentation, and you will know why EF worth your time.

How to Think Like the Entity Framework Presentation: http://blogs.teamb.com/craigstuntz/2009/09/11/38394/