Entity Framework V2

Question

Is it possible to give an indication as to what is likely to be in V2 of Entity Framework (and also what is not going to be in V2) ?

I realise that it may be too soon to say with much clarity but perhaps it might be possible to categorise features roughly into :

- Will be in V2

- May be in V2

- Will not be in V2

Some of the features of interest to me are:
- POCO
- Enum support
- EDM Designer enhancements
- Object Services API enhancements (Detach/Attach/Update to or from Object Graph, Association event handling)
- L2E Math function mappings
- Foreign Key support versus Associations
- Custom Code generation

and of course there are the other features such as Model First, etc, etc, etc

Thanks

 

 

Answer 1

I'd like to know the answer to this too!

Specifically, I'd like to know whether/to what extent Table Valued Functions will be supported in EF4 (as we now call it).

Answer 2

Well I can give you some information, because all this has already been announced through various means including the EF Design Blog :

- POCO - yes
- Enum Support - unlikely
- EDM Designer Enhancements - yes, lots.
- Object Services API enhancements - yes, not sure what you are asking for exactly, but there have been numerous improvements to make life easier.
- L2E Math function mapping - not sure exactly what you mean but we have much better support for function in L2E now, you can even register your own 'stubs' for database functions and even 'model' functions.
- ForeignKey support - yes
- Custom Code Generation - yes (using T4)
- Table Value Functions - unlikely, but see Model Defined Functions below.

Others (off the top of my head, not an exhaustive list):

- Model Defined Functions (similar to a TVF because they are composable, big difference is that they are defined in the CSDL and as a result are in terms of the Conceptual Model not the Storage Model).
- Model First (i.e. create a model and build a database from the model)
- ComplexType support in the designer
- Better support for Stored Procedures

Hope this helps
Alex
Microsoft.

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Alex James (Microsoft)

Answer 3

Hello!
I've searched the Entity Framework Design blog and haven't found anything on including or not enumeration support in EF 4.0.
Alex, you say it's unlikely - why so? Can we count on this information considering the final release of 10-4?
Enumeration support is pretty much a blocking issue for us (an I think for may other companies and developers) and may make us choose some other technology instead of EF... And the rest of the improvements seem so shimmy that I would really like to have EF as my technology of choice...
So, is there any hope for us here or should we forget it until vNext?

Best Regards,
Mikhail

Answer 4

What about multiple database support? Even LINQ-to-SQL supported multiple databases on the same server.

Also, is query logging going to be supported? A simple TextWriter Log property on the context object worked great in LINQ-to-SQL.