What is EF
Entity Framework (EF) is an object-relational mapper that enables .NET developers to work with relational data using domain-specific objects. It eliminates the need for most of the data-access code that developers usually need to write.
Entity Framework is actively developed by the Entity Framework team which is assigned to the Microsoft Open Tech Hub and in collaboration with a community of open source developers. Together we are dedicated to creating the best possible data access experience for .NET developers.
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ADO.NET is a very strong framework for data access. ADO.NET has been around since many years and there are a lot of systems running over ADO.NET. Developers who are totally oblivious to the concept of ORMs will probably be asking "What is Entity Framework? What are the benefits of using it and is it an alternative to ADO.NET?"
Well, to answer the first question about what is Entity Framework, Entity Framework is an Object Relational Mapper (ORM). It basically generates business objects and entities according to the database tables and provides the mechanism for:
- Performing basic CRUD (Create, Read, Update, Delete) operations.
- Easily managing "1 to 1", "1 to many", and "many to many" relationships.
- Ability to have inheritance relationships between entities.
and to answer the second question, the benefits are:
- We can have all data access logic written in higher level languages.
- The conceptual model can be represented in a better way by using relationships among entities.
- The underlying data store can be replaced without much overhead since all data access logic is present at a higher level.
