I am working on my first .NET Web API. I have an existing .NET Windows Forms application using a SQL Server 2008 R2 database, and now I need to write a new app: a straightforward Android tablet application that will access the same database. These apps for just for internal use; not outside the one company.
I have been on a long journey though many tutorials, blogs and posts here, including this I'm lost. What happened to ASP.NET MVC 5? super helpful explanation of .net products and versions. But over and over I get hopelessly confused about which product I should choose to write the Web API. I can't always tell from some of the tutorials whether the ideas and techniques and configurations apply to both .NET Core and .NET Framework, or just one, and if the tutorial works with current versions. I am using Visual Studio 2019.
Does anyone have a recommendation for whether I should be using .NET Framework 4.8, or the new .NET Core?
I do not find this guidance from Microsoft helpful.
I think I should probably use Entity Framework to generate code from my existing database, but I also think I could pretty quickly code SQL calls right into the Web API controllers as I have seen done in some tutorials. Is that considered a bad practice?
Thank you for any steering you might offer.