Some of the best Entity Framework info is currently living in the MSDN forums.
Mike Pizzo is the Principal Architect on the DP (Data Programmability) team.
Today, Mike wrote a lengthy response to yet another query on “what is the difference between linq to sql and Entity Framework”. At DevConnections in March, I asked 5 different people from Microsoft this question and got 5 different answers. 🙂 A few weeks later, I wrote my own answer in this blog post. The DP team has become much clearer about thsi lately.
Here are some highlights from Mike’s reply:
- LINQ to SQL is targeted more toward rapidly developing applications against your existing Microsoft SQL Server schema, while the Entity Framework provides object- and storage-layer access to Microsoft SQL Server and 3rd party databases through a loosely coupled, flexible mapping to existing relational schema.
- LINQ to SQL has features targeting “Rapid Development” against a Microsoft SQL Server database.
- The Entity Framework has features targeting “Enterprise Scenarios”.
- The Entity Framework is more than LINQ to Entities; it includes a “storage layer” that lets you use the same conceptual application model through low-level ADO.NET Data Provider interfaces using Entity SQL, and efficiently stream results as possibly hierarchical/polymorphic DataReaders, saving the overhead of materializing objects for read-only scenarios where there is no additional business logic.