Part 2. Getting started

Entity Framework is Microsoft’s answer to the O/RM needs in data-driven applications. In part 1 of this book, you learned which scenarios Entity Framework addresses and how it works internally to accomplish its tasks. In this part of the book, you’ll use the components you’ve already seen to develop an application that covers all possible requests.

To fully cover data access, an application must be able to retrieve data, transform the data into objects, track any data modification, and persist the data to the database. All this must be done in a transactional and concurrency-safe way.

Chapter 3 introduces the basics of querying, covering the components that play a role in this function. Chapter 4 tours the LINQ to Entities dialect and demonstrates how all the tasks you can accomplish in SQL can be carried out with this new language. Chapter 5 shows how mapping works in Entity Framework. You’ll learn how to use the designer to design classes and how designer actions are reflected in the EDM.

Chapter 6 discusses the entity lifecycle. Here you’ll learn how Entity Framework manages the entities it retrieves from the database and the entities you attach to the context. You’ll discover how an entity can change its state and how that affects the way it’s persisted.

Chapter 7 uses the features explained in chapter 6 and examines how modifications made to entities are persisted to the database. Here you’ll learn how to persist simple entities as well as complex ones. Finally, chapter 8 explains how to deal with transactions and how to avoid concurrency problems, which are a common concern in many applications.