Dhananjay Kumar

Title: Programming Entity Framework: Code First

Number of Pages < 200

Price: $9.99 Kindle Edition

      $21.59 Paperback

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I got an opportunity to get a copy of book Programming Entity Framework: Code First from well-known author, speaker and an authority on Entity Framework Julie Lerman . I was very excited to get book directly from the author. I got amazed seeing how skillfully and with dexterity both of the authors has written such an important and depth topic in less than 200 pages. Book contains all together 8 chapters and If you are developer working on database centric applications then this book is for you. This book focuses on Code First approach of architecting the application. While you flip through the pages of the books, you will experience the authority of Julie Lerman on the subject.

Before I go ahead and write my experience on this this awesome book, let me give a try to make you understand what is Code First?

Most popular way of architecting an application is to design database first. First you model the requirement into database and then using different API like ADO.Net or ORM like LINQ to SQL Class, NHibernate etc. work with the database. This approach of architecting an application is called as Database First Approach

In .NET 3.5 Microsoft came up with ADO.Net Entity Framework, It was helping developers to create conceptual model.

• It was creating Conceptual model into XML File.
• Extension of XML file is EDMX.
• XML file can be seen in designer where developers can edit the design on conceptual model.

ADO.Net Entity Framework was working on concepts of Database first approach where conceptual model gets created on existing database.

One of the most popular ways of architecting your application is to have Model First. You may have mapped database requirement in a XML file and create database from the XML file. This approach of architecting database is called Model First Approach.

In Model first approach you can start working on project without having a database. You can design the conceptual model using Visual Studio designer and later database can be created from this conceptual model.

In .NET 4.0 and Visual Studio 2010, Microsoft came up with new version of ADO.Net Entity Framework version 4.0 and it was supporting developers to architect their application as Model First approach.

Regardless of the approach you use in your application automatically lot of codes get created as classes and you work with the classes. Here comes a third way of creating Database and that is Code First approach. In this you model your requirement in plain classes and then databases gets created from these classes. Developers first create Domain Classes and then later database gets created from these domain classes.

In your application POCO classes are model and they are used to create the database. This approach of architecting an application is called “CODE FIRST”.

Now if you have a basic understanding of Code first approach after reading above paragraph then you should be thanking Julie Lerman rather me because my understating was based on first two paragraph of first chapter of book titled Programming Entity Framework: CODE FIRST

Table Of Contents

By seeing table of contents you must have got an idea that how useful this book would be if you are a developer working on Database centric applications.

About Authors

Julia Lerman is the leading independent authority on the Entity Framework and has been using and teaching the technology since its inception in 2006. She is the author of the highly acclaimed book, Programming Entity Framework, 1st and 2nd editions and is well known in the .NET community as a Microsoft MVP, ASPInsider, and INETA Speaker. Julia is a frequent presenter at technical conferences around the world and writes articles for many well-known technical publications including the Data Points column in MSDN Magazine. Julia blogs at http://thedatafarm.com/blog

Rowan Miller is Program Manager in ADO.Net Entity Framework team at Microsoft.

Conclusion

I strongly suggest to you to read this book and take your expertise to next level. All 8 chapters’ of this book will help you to have a better understating on the Code First approach and codes samples will help you to understand better way of modeling your database from the code.