Introduction to EF/EF Core
Entity Framework (EF) Core is a lightweight, extensible, open source, and cross-platform version of the popular Entity Framework data access technology. EF Core is a modern object database mapper for .NET. It supports LINQ queries, change tracking, updates, and schema migration. EF Core works with SQL Server, Azure SQL Database, SQLite, Azure Cosmos DB, MySQL, PostgreSQL, and other databases through the provider plug-in API. (Officially produced by Microsoft).
Official documentation tutorial:Entity Framework Documentation Center | Microsoft Learn
GitHub地址：https://github.com/dotnet/efcore
How to choose .NET ORM?
If you still don’t know which ORM to choose for .NET application development, you might as well read the following two articles. I believe they will be helpful to you.
Three modes of EF development
These three patterns are all ways of defining and managing data models, but they are implemented in different ways and are suitable for different scenarios.
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Code First
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Database First
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Model First
Code First
The code-first mode means to first write the entity classes and database context classes for the database table, and then use the EF tool to create tables based on the code, generate database table structures, mapping files, etc.
advantage
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This mode is suitable for scenarios where developers are more accustomed to using code to manage data models, and can also define data models more flexibly.
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EF provides an automatic migration function, which can automatically update the database structure according to changes in entity classes, simplifying the process of database iterative development.
shortcoming
When the data model changes, developers also need to manually modify the code and perform data migration operations. Therefore, the code work can be relatively tedious in some cases, especially when dealing with complex data models or frequent changes.
Database First
Database-first mode means that the database will be created first, and then the model will be created using the Entity Framework designer included in Visual Studio (Project => Add New Item => Select "Data" from the left menu, then " ADO.NET Entity Data Model" => Entity Data Model Wizard (Add Database Access Address) => Select "Generate from Database", then click "Next"), and finally generate the EDMX file (.edmx extension).
advantage
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Quickly generate data models through existing database structures, reducing the time and workload of manually writing model classes and speeding up development.
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It is suitable for projects with existing databases. There is no need to design the data model from scratch, and it is easy to integrate and develop with existing databases.
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When the database structure changes, the data model can be updated to maintain consistency between the model and the database to facilitate maintenance.
shortcoming
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Automatically generated model classes may contain too many attributes and associations, making the model class too large and complex, which is not conducive to maintenance and understanding.
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The automatically generated model classes may not be the optimal data access method, which may cause some performance problems and require additional optimization.
Model First
Model-first mode is a combination (a combination) of database-first mode and code-first mode. In model-first mode, you first define the entity data model (select "Empty Model" and click "Finish"), and then generate the database structure from this model.
advantage
Using visualization tools, developers can intuitively design data models and define entities and relationships through drag-and-drop and configure properties, thereby improving development efficiency.
shortcoming
The operation steps are cumbersome, and for complex data models, it may become difficult to use visual tools to design and manage them. When models become large and complex, the performance and ease of use of visualization tools may suffer.
Final summary
Through the above simple overview of the three development modes of EF, we can see that the Code First mode (Code First) and the Database First mode (Database First) are more suitable for enterprise application development, because these two methods are more in line with our actual development usage. model. So which one to use depends on the complexity of your own project and the usage habits of your team. If you have different opinions, please leave a message.
Article reprinted from:Time Chaser
Original link:https://www.cnblogs.com/Can-daydayup/p/17900287.html
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