EF is ok for when you have a simplistic CRUD situation whereby you feed data on a per table basis, it does however get a bit murky and cumbersome when you have linked tables and such, as then its a case of "you better know EF like the back of your hand before you proceed" type moments. I personally have had a love/hate relationship with it as on one hand its very seductive in the way it enables you to persist / retrieve data with "look mah, 2 lines of code" vs doing it other ways. On the flip side, it has certain issues that I just find irritating (espec with the Silverlight and WPF parity breakdowns).
That being said, EF is used within a few Microsoft products themselves so its shelf life is destined for longer than most would expect. The majority of the investment from the DP team in this space is around this and I know of some MSR folks looking into how EF + Linked Table structures within multiple DB types can work further (shows MSR related commitment?) Regards, Scott Barnes http://www.riagenic.com On Fri, Dec 17, 2010 at 8:16 AM, Greg Keogh <[email protected]> wrote: > Ooops, I forgot to mention... > > > > I created a sanity test app that makes a model out of a CE 3.5 database with > a dozen joined tables and it seems to be working without any glitches at > all. I just added all the tables, it made a lovely default model diagram and > classes, then a Forms app can load a table into a grid, edit and save the > changes with a tiny amount of code. I haven’t tried manipulating navigation > collections or anything fancy yet. > > > > The fact that it works nicely with CE 3.5 is encouraging for me and I feel > keen now about pushing EF4 a bit harder in a real app. > > > > Greg
