The video from my webcast, Top 10 Treats in Entity Framework 4 is available on Oreilly’s website: http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/e/1517.

I just discovered that WebEx saved the chat window from my O’Reilly webcast last month. So I thought I would pick out the quesitons and answer them here although I did answer some of them at the end of the webcast:

Q address NOT Address??

Someone noticed that an entity was named address. The pluralization support in the VS2010 EDM Designer does not fix up bad capitalization from the database which this was meant to highlight. Another viewer replied: it’s address and not Address because the original table was with a lower case ‘a’. VS2010 supports pluralization, but doesn’t change capitalization

Q These classes are not POCO, correct? What do I have to do to have POCO and generate db schema?

In the early part of the demo I was wroking with the default EntityObjects. To use POCO classes to generate db schema you’ll want to skip the model and use the Code-Only support that is part of the EF Feature CTP: Updated Feature CTP Walkthrough- Code Only for Entity Framework

This is awesome. We will all forgot how to sql.
Not a question, but a funny comment I wanted to share.

Q What about update database from model?

Update database from model has been supported sine the first version of EF. It will bring in new tables and new properties in tables but it will not modify property types. Be aware that any changes made manually to the SSDL get overwritten during this process.

Q. How much control does the developer have over the generated SQL DDL?
I answered this one at the end of the webcast. There is a T4 template that drives the DDL generation so that’s customizable.

This thing needs a pause button! LOL
Another funny comment I thought I would share. Yeah it is tough doing these webcasts that have a time limit! 🙂

Q. can you control lazy loading on a per entity level?
I happened to answer this question as I was talking about lazy loading and the person who asked then said: “ah thanks … ok, so per context only.”

Q. How easy is it to mock entities for nUnit or xUnit testing?

The new IObjectSet interface makes it totally possible to mock entities now. Many people have written blog posts about this. Here’s mine: http://thedatafarm.wpengine.com/blog/data-access/agile-entity-framework-4-repository-part-5-iobjectset/

Q: I heard something about "model functions" or "schema functions", implying I can do calculations for fields OR create views over entities in the EDM / .edmx file. Is this true?
Yes. Check out http://thedatafarm.wpengine.com/blog/data-access/ef4-model-defined-functions-level-1-amp-2/

Q: how does Oracle support compare? Is it as functionally complete? Is it as stable/bug free?

Oracle providers are available from DevArt and Data Direct. As far as I know they are both very solid. Functionally complete? Dunno.

LINK to EF POCO Adapter for EF1: code.msdn.microsoft.com/EFPocoAdapter

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