Visual Studio 2010 Defaults were defined Prior to DbContext Release

Visual Studio 2010 and .NET 4 were released before Entity Framework’s DbContext existed. DbContext was first released along with Code First in the Entity Framework 4.1 package.

By default, when you create and EDMX (whether Database First or Model First) in VS2010, the code generator will build classes that inherit from EntityObject and  the context created inherits from ObjectContext.

Back then there was also the option of switching to a T4 template that created lighter weight domain classes from your entities while still using ObjectContet as the base class for the generated context.

Please Generate DbContext, not ObjectContext

Along with DbContext, the team released a new T4 template that would generate even *simpler* domain classesa and a context class that inhertied from the newer, smarter and lighter weight DbContext.

The guidance from the team (and I am in full agreement) was to use this DbContext template for any new project, but stick with the older ones if you needed the backward compatibility. This mean downloading EntityFramework from NuGet and doing the special steps to switch to generating with the T4 template.

New Default Behavior for Visual Studio 2012

Now in Visual Studio 2012, the default behavior follows their guidance! Hooray.

When you create an EDMX, Visual Studio 2012 will automatically use the DbContext template to generate the classes and context *and* it will automatically add EntityFramework.dll to your project.

Here you can see the EntityFramework reference, the two new templates and the packages.config (a NuGet asset which tells the project about the downloaded EntityFramework.dll) that were added to the project when I added a new ADO.NET Entity Data Model item to my project.

#happiness

The EF Designer has undergone a little change since the Release Candidate of VS2012. It is now following the-visual-style-formerly-known-as-Metro