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Entity Framework articles

On this page you will find an overview of all articles that I have written myself. The more recent articles deal with software development with .NET (C#, Visual Studio, VSTS, Azure, LINQ, Entity Framework, Web services, WPF, Silverlight, ...) in particular. The older articles were often written for the purposes of courses or demonstrations at my computerclub and these articles are mostly about Delphi, PHP, databases, Javascript, Windows, Office, Multimedia applications, Atari, ...

Use the left panel to filter the more than 115 articles by category. These articles can be used freely for personal use. Placing the full articles on other websites is not allowed without the permission of the author.

.NET - Spatial Data in Entity Framework 5.0

Entity Framework

In Entity Framework 5.0 spatial data types are supported so now we can create Linq queries to query nearby locations, calculate distances and check if locations intersect with an area. This articles demonstrates how to insert and update locations with latitude and longitude coordinates and how to query them in different ways.

.NET - Functions in the Entity Framework 4.0: part 3

Entity Framework

In this third article about the Entity Framework 4.0 I will explore some SqlClr features and show how to call custom .NET functions and aggregates in LINQ to Entities queries.

.NET - Functions in the Entity Framework 4.0: part 2

Entity Framework

In this second article about the Entity Framework version 4.0 user defined functions and the new Model Defined Functions will be explored. Based on a series of simple examples I will show how to map UDF's and Entity SQL expressions to Model Defined Functions and how to call them in LINQ to Entities queries.

.NET - Functions in the Entity Framework 4.0: part 1

Entity Framework

The Entity Framework together with LINQ to Entities are very powerful technologies to access and manipulate data from a database. But when you need to gain performance or need extra security, stored procedures and user defined functions are often required. In this first article in a series of three I will focus on how to use stored procedures in the Entity Framework 4.0.

.NET - New connection providers in LINQPad

Entity Framework

LINQPad was introduced in 2007 and nowadays it is a very mature tool which should be in the toolbox of every .NET developer. Version 1.35 offers new connection providers and it has native support for LINQ to SQL and the ADO.NET Entity Framework data models. It also provides new query types like SQL and Entity-SQL. In this small article I will highlight some of the new features.

.NET - Sharing source code between .NET and Silverlight

Entity Framework

A common problem when developing Silverlight applications is how to share classes and in particular (Entity Framework) entities which are compiled for the full .NET framework in a Silverlight application. Silverlight is a browser plugin and a subset of the full .NET framework. Therefore Visual Studio does not allow referencing .NET assemblies from your Silverlight application. In this article I will demonstrate a very simple technique to share source code and it will give several real world examples and some handy tips.

.NET - ADO.NET Entity Framework : Metadata extension methods

Entity Framework

In addition to my article about querying the metadata of the ADO.NET Entity Framework I have implemented several extension methods that utilize this metadata. This article will describe a set of extension methods which can be used to extend the standard Entity Framework classes (ObjectQuery, EntityObject, ObjectStateManager, ...).

.NET - ADO.NET Entity Framework : Querying metadata

Entity Framework

A few months ago I posted several articles about the ADO.NET Entity Framework beta 3. In the meanwhile the Entity Framework has been officially released and a lot of resources about this technology have become available. In the last few weeks I have been taking a closer look at the metadata services. This article will demonstrate 20 examples which use LINQ to query the metadata collections of the ADO.NET Entity Framework. These queries can be used to examine the structure of your Entity Data Model or to get statistics about it.

.NET - LINQ AsHierarchy() extension method - part 2

Entity Framework

A few months ago I published an article about my LINQ AsHierarchy extension method. This extension method can be used to convert a flat collection of records to a hierarchical structure of nested collections. I got a lot of enthusiastic responses and questions so I decided to improve this technique a little further. This new article will describe the new features and demonstrates how to use the LINQ to Objects and the new LINQ to SQL AsHierarchy extension methods.

.NET - LINQ AsHierarchy() extension method - part 1

Entity Framework

This article explains how to convert data from a self referencing table (adjacency model) to a hierarchy of nested collections (nested set model). The new LINQ AsHierarchy() extension method can be used to convert data and bind it to WPF TreeViews.

.NET - ADO.NET Entity Framework & LINQ to Entities - part 3

Entity Framework

In this third part of my series of articles about the ADO.NET Entity Framework I will demonstrate how to add and modify data, use change tracking and handle concurrency conflicts. I have also implemented a Dump() extension method which can be useful for displaying all change tracking information.

.NET - ADO.NET Entity Framework & LINQ to Entities - part 2

Entity Framework

Second part of my series of articles about the ADO.NET Entity Framework. This article covers a few handy testing and learning tools like eSqlBlast and LINQPad. It also describes a few techniques on how to view the generated T-SQL statements when executing Entity SQL or LINQ to Entities queries.

.NET - ADO.NET Entity Framework & LINQ to Entities - part 1

Entity Framework

A few weeks ago Microsoft released Beta 3 of the ADO.NET Entity Framework (EF). The Entity Framework looks like an interesting technology which is more powerful and advanced than LINQ to SQL. I have created a small tutorial on how to start with the Entity Framework using the Northwind sample database. This first article covers the Entity Data Model (EDM), Entity SQL and LINQ to Entities. I will try to compare EF to LINQ to SQL if possible.