Category Archives: Book

Programming Entity Framework: Code First edition is now available as an ebook!

Book

OReilly Media pushed the ebook versions (PDF, mobi (for kindle) & others) of Programming Entity Framework Code First live this morning! You can get it at http://shop.oreilly.com/product/0636920022220.do. The print version should be available soon. Print is also available for pre-order on the OReilly site as well as on Amazon at http://juliel.me/ufZtlb. Amazon should have the kindle version available shortly. On twitter, Shawn Wildermuth said “I’ll get it when the Kindle version ships..tech books on a Kindle Fire are really good so far”.

You Win! An EF 4.1 Update to Programming Entity Framework is In the Works!

Book

After I finished writing the first edition of Programming Entity Framework, 832 pages long, I announced to anyone within earshot that if I every talked about writing another book to just shoot me.

After I finished writing the second edition of Programming Entity Framework, which came in at nearly 900 pages, I said “I really mean it this time"!

And then Entity Framework 4.1 was released with Code First modeling and the sweetness of the DbContext and other additions to this API.

Many asked me if I would update the book. I said “no” a thousand times and explained in this blog post, EF4 books and EF 4.1, why revising the entire book for what amounts to two small additions that don’t impact the core behavior of Entity Framework made no sense.

But you still asked.

I wrote articles and created videos.

But you still asked for a new book.

And then in a moment of insanity (I believe it was during 5 long hours of driving alone in the car to my parents’ house), I decided that maybe I could just write a short book that would essentially “tack-on” to Programming Entity Framework Second Edition.

And so it goes…this is what I am now working on. But I got smart this time! This spring, I worked on a series of content for MSDN with Rowan Miller from Microsoft. Rowan is a Program Manager on the ADO.NET Entity Framework team and has been instrumental in EF 4.1. He knows it better than most anybody. Certainly better than I do! And he’s a good writer. He’s a bit less verbose than I am (you can wrap that in exaggeration) but I’ve been working on him. Winking smile  I liked working on that project with Rowan and it did not take a lot of convincing to get Rowan to agree to do a book with me. I’m very lucky to have him as a partner-in-crime for so many reasons!

Rowan and I are collaborating on all aspects of this project. We are both writing, but we are working very closely together so that it is not disjointed. We’ll have a common writing style and there will be a storyline and buildup of code from beginning to end. We are helping each other with decisions about samples and how information should flow.

The Game Plan

We are writing two “mini-books” for O’Reilly Media. We are writing them as though they are a continuation of Programming Entity Framework. I expect that we’ll have the same Seychelles Blue Pigeon on the cover (or some twist on that). We’ll work with the same business domain , Breakaway Geek Adventures, and there will be references to the previous book (2nd edition). There’s just no reason to repeat explanations of API stuff that is the same.

The pattern for these books follows other recent offerings from O’Reilly.  They will be short-ish (targetting 100 pages each) and presented as e-books (with print on demand availability). The first book will focus on Code First – more specifically, on building a model, database initialization etc. The second book will start where the first book ends focusing on the other half of EF 4.1, DbContext, DbSet etc. In this book we’ll be able to write real code with the combination of DbContext (etc) and Code First. This is where we’ll create some sample apps, repository, do some testing etc.  We are already about 1/2 way through writing the Code First book and hope these will be out in mid-fall.

If you take a look at the CouchDB books that Bradley Holt ( a friend and neighbor and one of the Vermont Code Camp organizers – just coincidentally Smile)  has written — Writing and Querying MapReduce Views in CouchDB, First Edition and Scaling CouchDB, First Edition (with more to come)), this is what Rowan and I are doing.  Note that Bradley’s books are also on Amazon (etc) and available for Kindle too. I don’t know how the pricing will work out.

The e-books will be in color (yay!). So as we copy our code from Visual Studio, we are leaving the code coloring in tact. The print books will be black & white.

We want to get all of the core writing done by mid-September, otherwise Rowan won’t be able to go attend his wedding and honeymoon. That wouldn’t be a great way to start a marriage, so we’re working hard toward this goal.

Programming Entity Framework e-book for $9.99 one day only!

Book

O’Reilly Media has placed the new edition of my book available  in their “Deal of the Day” program today. You can get the ebook version for only $9.99.

That’s TODAY only, though: Monday August 30, 2010.

Go to http://oreilly.com/catalog/9780596807269 and use the discount code DDPEF.

If you miss it today, you can get a 50% discount on the ebook from O’Reilly (not sure about a deadline) with the code MTKED. THat code is also good for a 40% discount on the print copy. However the MTKED discount code does not work everywhere. I’ve heard that people using the UK checkout are unable to use that.

If you want to get the book from Amazon, here is a direct link to Programming Entity Framework 2nd edition (for VS2010/EF4/.NET4)

The Acknowledgements in Programming Entity Framework 2nd Edition

Book

In a 900 page book, this was the only creative writing I got to do so I had some fun with it. 🙂

There are a lot of hyperlinks to push into here for the blog post, I will come back to that task later.

Acknowledgments


And now for the most rewarding writing task after completing over 800 pages of technical writing—thanking the Academy. My academy is a host of bright, generous, and dedicated geeks (and a few nongeeks) who have helped make this book the best it can be.

First nods go to the technical reviewers. These are the folks who were willing to read the book in its roughest format and provide feedback to help me make it more useful and comprehensible to you, the readers of the final version. The award for helping to keep me from exposing myself to humiliation over my nascent C# skills goes to Wesley Bakker, a Dutch developer who does code reviews for a living. I learned a lot from Wes and am grateful for his patience and kid-glove handling of my poor ego. I also had a number of EF and EF 4 newbies on board to help ensure that I didn’t make any leaps without bringing them along. You who are new to EF should thank them as well: Camey Combs, Suzanne Shushereba, Doug Holland, and John McConnell. Ward Bell’s brilliant architectural mind was displayed in comments that nearly exceeded my own text. He kept me honest and kept me thinking. Everyone should email Ward and beg him to write a book. I don’t care what the topic is. Ward has deep EF knowledge, as does Per Okvist, whose feedback was also invaluable. Two database gurus were enormously helpful: Bob Beauchemin and Anil Das. Their meticulous minds helped me in areas that reached much further than discussions about database specifics.

I also brought in some big guns to look at particular chapters in their area of expertise. Thanks so much to Greg Young, Bobby Johnson, Jarod Ferguson, and Mike Campbell for helping me with my education in persistence ignorance and related topics and for looking over the critical chapter on PI and testing to make sure that I had learned my lessons well. I was close, but they helped guide me where I had strayed. K. Scott Allen and Imar Spaanjaars, both ASP.NET gurus, provided some additional guidance and a read-through of a number of chapters.

And then there was the real editing—the organization and flow of the text. John Osborn, who was the editor on the first edition of this book, was engaged to edit this edition as well. It’s hard for me to express my gratitude for the incredible dedication  and expertise he provided. Even though I thought myself much more experienced this time around, John took every chapter and reorganized it, clarifying its focus and flow. He is an incredible editor and I was very lucky to have him work on my book again.

Along the way, of course, I had help from so many people at Microsoft on the Entity Framework team and beyond. There is no way I can list them all, but here’s my best shot (not in any special order): Danny Simmons, Elisa Flasko, Noam Ben-Ami, Diego Vega, Kati Iceva, Srikanth Mandadi, Alex James, Jarek Kowalski, Jeff Derstadt, Rowan Miller, Craig Lee, David Annesley-DeWinter, Adi Unnithan, Andrew Peters, Shyam Pather, and Tim Laverty. Forgive me if I’ve neglected to mention someone.

You’ll find that I have used (and recommended) a few additional tools throughout the book. The publishers generously provided me free licenses for which I’m grateful. The recommendations are because they are great tools, not because I didn’t have to pay for them. The tools include LINQPad, written by another O’Reilly author, Joseph Albahari; and ReSharper from JetBrains. ReSharper was my first line of defense for ensuring that my C# code wasn’t an embarrassment, while Wesley Bakker was my second. I learned so much from both of them. Entity Framework Profiler is an awesome tool for keeping track of what’s going on in your database when using Entity Framework. I also used two tools for producing images in this book. The first is Snagit from TechSmith, which was completely invaluable for capturing and editing screenshots. The second is Balsamiq Mockups, which enabled me to have a little fun creating mock-ups of application UIs in a number of chapters. Finally, thanks to Red Gate, a great company with many awesome tools. For this book, I used its .NET Reflector to inspect some assemblies,
and I’ve used their SQL Packager for creating a simple-to-install version of the sample databases for you to use.

My publisher has, as usual, provided great support for me. I had not one, but two editors—this is not the job of editing the book, but of counseling me and holding my hand throughout the process. Thanks to Laurel Ruma (who moved on to become O’Reilly’s über–Government 2.0 guru), and Mike Hendrickson who brings years of experience (not saying he’s old) for keeping me focused and helping me avoid being taken away in a funny white coat. I was also lucky to have Audrey Doyle as my copy editor again. She did an amazing job on the first edition, so I begged O’Reilly to contract her again. Lucky me, they did. (She is going to hate that last nonsentence; I dare you to leave it in, Audrey.)

If you read the Preface of my first book, you’ll be happy to know that this time around I have no heart-wrenching pet losses to report, so you can put away the tissues you may have prepared yourself with. In fact, we adopted a teenage Newfoundland dog named Sampson just as I began to write this edition. Thank goodness for his needed afternoon walks and his constantly entertaining personality, without which I’d have gone completely mad during the time I have been writing this book. You can meet this silly boy on my blog at http://thedatafarm.wpengine.com/blog/tags/Sampson.

Somehow I have managed to retain my patient husband, Rich Flynn, to whom I promised “don’t worry, never again” when I finished the first edition. He has just suffered through another year of spaghetti, dirty dishes, ravaged potato chip supplies, and having to cede a little more space in bed as my waistline expanded thanks to my life in the computer chair (and all those potato chips).

And finally, thanks to all of the incredible support that has come from the .NET community. I’m very proud of the first edition of the book, and each private “thank you” or complimentary public review on places like Amazon.com and your blogs has meant so much to me. This truly kept me going through what my Twitter followers know only too well was an arduous process in writing this second edition.

Oh, and to anyone who gave me chocolate…thanks!