MrDave's (David Yack) Blog!

Now that Entity Framework V1 is in the final steps towards release as part of the .NET 3.5 SP1 beta the team is turning up the V2 design process.    I've been doing a bunch of training over the last month that has included Entity Framework as part of the events and it has been well received. 

I've also been following more of the community forums and blogs on EF.   People are asking a lot of great questions and sharing a lot of good ideas.  Like all big changes, V1 won't solve everyone's problems or be a good fit for everyone to adopt.  But it does set the stage with a solid foundation to build on.

If you haven't spent time in the forums, the EF team has been busy answering questions as well as starting to collect what features people want in V2.  Today, they took that a step further by setting up a Entity Framework Design blog that they plan to keep updated as they go through the V2 design process sharing as much as they can with the community.  If you read nothing else, read Tim Mallalieu's first post on the blog that outlines the intent of the transparency. 

How, When, If you adopt Entity Framework is an individual architecture choice each architect has to make for their company.  I never think you should just blindly adopt a Microsoft or any vendor technology just because it's released.  That said, you do need to evaluate and find ones that give you an advantage or speed up development or meet other goals.  Sometimes that even means not using all the advanced features from day 1.  If you use any Data Access (like who doesn't) you owe it to yourself to get involved and help shape the feature set for V2 - but first you probably need to get your hands around what V1 offers!   Remember, just reading a overview isn't the same as kicking the tires!