Monthly Archives: April 2012

Video: Entity Framework 5 Enums and Moving Solution from EF 4.3

Data Access

I moved a small EF 4.3 solution to EF5 (and to .NET 4.5) so I can add the new enum support to it. Then I started the process all over again and captured it as a screencast.

Pluralsight is hosting it on their blog here: Video: Entity Framework 5 New Features Sneak Peek. It’s 14 minutes long. I learned a whole bunch of tricks along with way which I’ve shared here.

  • Moving a solution from EF4.3 +.NET 4 to EF5 +.NET 4.5
  • Using the new SQL Server Object Explorer in Visual Studio 11
  • Working with the new DbLocal database
  • Seeing the enum support in action : how it impacts the database, inserting and querying data with enums.

Update to EF5 and DbLocal Default in Config

Data Access

A few weeks ago I wrote a blog post showing how EF5 uses DbLocal as its default database along with a screenshot of the configuration info that EF5 puts into your config (web.config or app.config) of the project that you’ve installed EF5 into.

Since then, EF5 Beta 2 was released and the details have changed ever so slightly.

Now, instead of having a SqlConnectionFactory and critical elements of a connection string, we have a new factory, the LocalDbConnectionFactory.

Here is what the element looks like with EF5 Beta 2:

  <entityFramework>
    <defaultConnectionFactory 
      type="System.Data.Entity.Infrastructure.LocalDbConnectionFactory, EntityFramework">
      <parameters>
        <parameter value="v11.0" />
      </parameters>
    </defaultConnectionFactory>
  </entityFramework>

EF5: Where are my DataAnnotations?

Data Access

EF 4.x:

EF 4.1+ has a DataAnnotations namespace for the new EF related annotations. Most of them are related to database schema.

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EF 5

Not even a DataAnnotations namespace in here. That’s because the annotations got incorporated into .NET 4.5.

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.NET 4.5

A new namespace within System.ComponentModel.DataAnnotations: “Schema”

All of the EF schema annotations are in here now. MaxLength and MinLength are in the DataAnnotations namespace.

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Added the following thanks to a suggestion from Cecil Phillip

If you are using EF5 with .NET 4, there is a special version of the Entity Framework assembly which actually has the version 4.4.*.

The EF related DataAnnotations *are* in this assembly but notice they’ve been organized into regular and schema as they are in  .NET 4.5.

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