For developers new to this pattern it requires a mindset change, how they think about data persistence and transactions. This could potentially introduce more complexity on top of code complexity by the abstractions. To reflect more on the unit of work’s lifetime, it’s a good idea to keep it as short as possible. what is entity framework Because every unit of work can potentially contain an open transaction, thus a live connection to the database, it is important to close these as soon as possible. If we leave transactions open for a long period of time, we could exhaust the database, and increase the chance of a concurrency exception.

what is entity framework in c#

Entity Framework (EF) is an open source[2] object–relational mapping (ORM) framework for ADO.NET. It was originally shipped as an integral part of .NET Framework, however starting with Entity Framework version 6.0 it has been delivered separately from the .NET Framework. Once the database is ready, in the next step, create a new “Console Application” with the name EFDemo as shown in the below image. Please use the below SQL script to create the database EF_Demo_DB, and tables Departments and Employees, and populate the tables with sample data.

Entity Framework Database First Approach

In the year 2008, Microsoft introduced Entity Framework as part of .NET Framework 3.5. Currently, two latest versions of Entity Framework are available one is EF 6 (works with .NET Framework), and another is EF Core (works with .NET or .NET Core). In this Entity Framework Tutorials Course using C#, I am going to discuss all the concepts of Entity Framework with Real-Time Examples. Here in this Entity Framework Tutorials article series, we will start from the very basics, and as we progress, we will cover all the intermediate and advanced features of Entity Framework as well. 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.

To understand what the unit of work pattern is about, first, we should take a look at the repository pattern. In a nutshell, repositories are the data access objects and their job is to handle the communication with the database. With the unit of work pattern, we split this communication responsibility. If an entity includes a property of another entity type, it is called a Reference Navigation Property. It points to a single entity and represents multiplicity of one (1) in the entity relationships.

EF Core Version History

When you make any changes to the object, the ORM will usually detect this, and mark the object as ‘modified’. When you save all the changes in your ORM to the database, the ORM will automatically generate insert/update/delete statements, based on what you did with the objects. Run the application and notice that Departments and Employees data are displayed as expected as shown in the below image. We have achieved all this without writing a single line of ADO.NET code. If this is not clear at this moment how it works, don’t worry we will discuss everything in detail in our upcoming articles. Nearly one-third of all developers use C# to build applications, with the population of C# developers reaching upwards of 10 million developers worldwide.

  • An ORM framework does this object to SQL mapping by generating SQL statements and the Entity manager will execute them when you need to save or load objects from the database.
  • The following figure illustrates the supported application types, .NET Frameworks and OSs.
  • When an entity has the property of generic collection type, it is known as collective navigation property.
  • Here, you can observe we have created the connection object, created the data adapter object, and created Dataset, Data Tables, and DataView objects.

Entity Framework is an Object-Relational Mapper which enable the .NET developers to work with the database using the .NET objects. It eliminates the need for accessing the code of the data that developers need to write. Entity Framework is an Object Relational Mapping (ORM) that helps to enhance the user’s app productivity by eliminating https://deveducation.com/ the redundant job in the application. EF builds the required DB Commands for writing or reading the data in DB and executes them perfectly. Finally, EF executes the query in DB and makes the results into domain objects to work with the application. Entity Framework Core is the new version of Entity Framework after EF 6.x.