Some weeks ago Microsoft released Beta 3 of the ADO.NET Entity Framework. The Entity Framework looks like a interesting technology which is more powerful and advanced than LINQ to SQL. Both technologies have a different kind of philosophy but several features have similar implementations.

I’ve started writing a series of articles about it. These articles will not explain all details about the Entity Framework nor compare everything with LINQ to SQL. But I will try to create a small tutorial on how to start with the Entity Framework using the Northwind sample database. If possible I will refer to LINQ to SQL features.

The first article covers following topics :

• Introduction
• The Entity Framework architecture
• Installation
• Generate an Entity Data Model
• The Entity Data Model (EDM)
  • LINQ to SQL Diagram vs. Entity Data Model
  • Names of EntityTypes and EntitySets
  • Scheme file (EDMX)
  • Model Browser
  • Mapping Details
  • Generated entity classes
  • Documentation
• Entity SQL
  • ObjectQuery queries which return entity types
  • ObjectQuery queries with parameters
  • ObjectQuery queries which return primitive types
  • ObjectQuery queries which return anonymous types
  • EntityCommand queries which return entity types
  • EntityCommand queries which return anonymous types
  • EntityCommand queries with parameters
• LINQ to Entities
  • LINQ queries with parameters
  • LINQ queries which return anonymous types