Model-Defined Functions are one of the great new features of EF4. The only downside is that it’s a little kludgey to call them from LINQ to Entities.

Jiri Cincura has a simple, but elegant workaround – the ever agile Extension Methods!

Model Defined Function as a method on entity (or on type for store function)

Not sure if I’ve blogged all of these (so twitter-addicted these days) so here’s a list of recent articles & webcasts I’ve done on EF4.

CoDe Magazine

• What’s New in Entity Framework 4? Part 1: API Changes (Sept/Oct 2009)
• What’s New in Entity Framework 4, Part 2: Modeling Changes (Nov/Dec 2009)

DevConnectionsPro Magazine (was aspNETPro Magazine)

• Renovations to .NET 4.0’s Entity Framework (Nov 2009)

(Note that the images for the article can be seen via hyperlinks. Wherever it says “as shown in Figure X”, there’s a hyperlink on Figure X and you can the see the image. Penton is working on the website, so hopefully this will be more obvious in the future.)

• Entity Framework 4, Beta 2 is Here (Jan 2010) Not online yet

Visual Studio Magazine

• Contributions to Entity Sequel by Jeffrey Schwartz

Webcasts

• Agile Entity Framework Part 1: POCO Classes  NotAtPDC.com, Nov 2009 (75 min.)
• Agile Entity Framework Part 2: Repositories & Testing  NotAtPDC.com Nov 2009 (75 min.)
• Upcoming: Tour the Top Ten Treats in EF4 OReilly.com Jan 27, 2010

Screencasts

• Screencast – What’s new in the Entity Data Model Designer in VS2010 (20 min.)

Interviews

• Channel 9 Øredev chit-chat: Dag König and Julia Lerman
• 5 Minutes WIth …Julie Lerman

Blog

Lots of blog posts on EF4 under the EF4 tag: thedatafarm.com/blog/tags/ef4

The Book
I’m hard at work on the 2nd Edition of my book, Programming Entity Framework which will be based on EF4. Look for the Rough Cuts version to appear soon on OReilly.com.