Introduction to Entity Framework

The EF 6.x is a stable and fully tested ORM technology in many .NET Framework applications. The application targets .NET Core, e.g., ASP.NET Core Applications. Entity Framework Core is the new and improved version of the Entity Framework for .NET Core applications. EF Core continues to support the same features and concepts as EF 6. The EF Core supports relational and non-relational databases, which is possible due to the database providers. The database providers are available as NuGet Packages.

what is entity framework in asp net

Here, in this article, we are going to discuss how to retrieve the data from the SQL Server Database using the Entity Framework Database First Approach in ASP.NET MVC Application. In our upcoming article, we will discuss using business objects as our model. MVC is an architectural pattern to build applications; entity framework is a object relational mapping framework. The Object Services layer includes the Object Context, representing the interaction session between the applications and the data source. The fundamental purpose of the Object Context is to conduct various operations, such as adding and deleting instances of things and querying the database to save the modified state.

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As per the above figure, Entity Framework fits between the business entities (domain classes) and the database. This approach first targets a database that does not exist and then creates it. It allows the developers to define and make new models with C# and .NET classes. In this approach, you can use empty databases and add tables too. Prior to .NET 3.5, we (developers) often used to write ADO.NET code or Enterprise Data Access Block to save or retrieve application data from the underlying database.

what is entity framework in asp net

From this window select “EF Designer from database” and click on the Next button as shown in the below image. Here, select the “EF Designer from database” option as we are going to use the Entity Framework Database First Approach. We want to display the data from both tables (Departments and Employees) in a console application as shown below. Pranaya Rout has published more than 3,000 articles in his 11-year career. Then provide a meaningful name for the connection string that is going to save in the web.config file.

What is Entity Framework in .NET Framework?

We are 60% completed and now need to implement Web API to consume the Entity calls and perform CRUD operation in Part B. Now, these migration files need to be executed to update the physical Database. Run the following command in the Package Manager console. Here will use the IDE – Visual Studio and select the project type as “ASP.NET Core Web App”. Here will consider a simple and basic model as ‘Employee’ and will use an Entity Framework with SQL Server database. Various profilers are commercially available to troubleshoot performance issues using Entity Framework, both for EF and EF Core variants.

what is entity framework in asp net

It works on multiple operating systems like Windows, Mac, and Linux. Let’s understand what entity framework can do for us with an example. Assume we have the following 2 tables (Departments and Employees). In this scenario, a different context is used to retrieve and save data. One instance of context class is used to retrieve the data, and another is used to save the data. When an entity has the property of another type of entity property, it is called reference navigation property.

Entity Framework Development Approaches

In the next step, click on the new connection From Choose your data connection wizard as shown below. From the next Entity Data Model Wizard screen, as we are going to use the Entity Framework Database First approach, so select EF Designer from Database option and click on the Next button as shown in the image below. Asp.net is a framework to STRUCTURE your project ,with Objects and Classes, not related to entity. In order to fully take advantage of this Entity Framework Course, you should have basic knowledge of C# and any database such as SQL Server, Oracle, or MySQL to learn more about these tutorials.

  • EF API can map each entity to tables and each property of an entity to a column in the database.
  • In the next article, I am going to discuss how to create Hyperlink in ASP.NET MVC application.
  • Open ‘appsettings.json’ and define the connection string.
  • For this, we need to create a Connection Object with the database, then Open the Connection, Create the Command Object, and execute the Command using Data Reader or Data Adapter.

However, it can also be used with standard .NET 4.5+ framework based applications. In the next article, I will discuss How to Install the Entity Framework Core in ASP.NET Core Application using Visual Studio. Here, I briefly introduced Entity Framework Core in this article, and I hope you enjoy this Introduction to Entity Framework Core article. Entity Framework is an ORM Tool and ORMs Tools are basically used to increase the developer’s productivity by reducing the redundant task of doing CRUD operation against a database in a .NET Application.

Entities

Version 5.0.0 was released on August 11, 2012[11] and is targeted at .NET framework 4.5. Also, this version is available for .Net framework 4, but without any runtime advantages over version 4. A third version of Entity Framework, version 4.1, was released on April 12, 2011, with Code First support. Entity Framework Core is the new and improved version of Entity Framework for .NET Core applications. EF Core is intended to be used with .NET Core applications.

In the code-first approach, EF Core API creates the database and tables using migration based on the conventions and configuration provided in your domain classes. As a developer, we mostly work with data-driven applications, and the ORM Framework generates the necessary SQL (to perform the CRUD operation) that the underlying database can understand. So, in simple words, we can say that the ORM Framework eliminates the need for most of the data access code that, as a developer, we generally write.

Querying data

Provide a meaningful namespace to your EDMX file and finally click on the Finish button as shown in the below image. Entity framework is object-relational entity framework meaning mapping (ORM) framework. It is an
enhancement to ADO.NET that gives developers an automated mechanism
for accessing & storing the data in the database.

Select the location where you want to create the project by clicking on the Browse button. Finally, click on the OK button as shown in the below image. Now, we will run the application on the Kestrel server. Rebuild the solution and hit on Run button with the following option selection. We can remove the created migration by running the below command in the Package Manager console.

And here we are also writing the SQL Commands to fetch the data from the database tables and fill the dataset. We can avoid all these ADO.NET Related things if we use Entity Framework. Let us proceed and see how we can rewrite the same example using Entity Framework using C# language. The following diagram illustrates where the Entity Framework fits into our application. In this article, I am going to discuss how to use Entity Framework in ASP.NET MVC Application to interact with SQL Server Database to perform the CRUD operation. In the ASP.NET MVC application, the controller responds to the incoming HTTP request, then gets the data from a model and hands it over to the view.

what is entity framework in asp net