Entity Framework 7 Beta 6 Out in Preview -- Visual Studio Magazine

Entity Framework 7 Beta 6 Out in Preview

EF7 Beta 6 adds data annotations, customization of reverse engineer via templates, and support for raw SQL commands.

By Michael Domingo
07/28/2015

Microsoft's Rowan Miller writes on the ADO.NET blog that Entity Framework 7 Beta 6 is now available in preview form. New this time out since beta 5 are data annotations, customization of reverse engineer via templates, and support for raw SQL commands.

Miller emphasizes that this preview "is designed to give you an idea of what the experience will be like and there are still a number of limitations and missing features that will be addressed before RTM." As such, it can be used with ASP.NET 5 applications (it's included when downloading ASP.NET 5), and full .NET apps that are run on .NET 4.5 or newer, as well as .NET Core.

It can also be run with Mac and Linux apps that are to be run on Mono 3.12.1 and newer. Miller writes that Universal Windows Platform apps will support it when Windows 10 Developer Tools goes live with Windows 10.

Currently, EF7 Beta 6 has providers for SQL Server 2008 and newer, SQL Server Compact Edition versions 3.5 and 4.0, and support for in-memory database that is "designed for testing purposes only." The team is also in development on a PostgresSQL provider.

With EF7 Beta 6 in preview, Miller writes that the team is currently working on bug fixes, fine-tuning performance, and doing API reviews. He said the team is well underway on the documentation, and next on the agenda before it RTMs is TPH inheritance, cascading deletes, and the ability to deploy database changes via migrations.

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