1

First of all - I'm fine with how EF4 works. My main concern right now is the ability to scale when I get over 100+ tables. Ideally the schema needs to be kept under the same data context. If I have to break it into subject areas it won't be very good. There will be duplicate code, etc.

So. There is no solution to brake EF4 into chunks and preserve relationships. Actually, there is a kind of way that involves not using the designer and manually editing the XML. Not good.

And here I found LLBLGen Pro. I understand it is an ORM framework with a designer but I also understand that I can use their designer to generate EF4 entities.

Do I understand correctly that:

  1. I can still use EF4 just like with VS designer? I mean output will be the same? I read somewhere I'm limited to using stored procs, no LINQ? Or it will be just like EF?
  2. I will be able to manage large database and only drawback will be that if there is changes to database I will have to re-generate code from outside of Visual studio?

If that is correct - it might be great solution to the slow designer/model issue.

Mark Hall
  • 53,938
  • 9
  • 94
  • 111
katit
  • 17,375
  • 35
  • 128
  • 256

1 Answers1

4

I can still use EF4 just like with VS designer? I mean output will be the same? I read somewhere I'm limited to using stored procs, no LINQ? Or it will be just like EF?

Where did you read it's limited to stored procs? It generates classes and an EDMX. You can choose to generate POCO's, STE's or 'EFv1 style' entities/contexts. So you can do with EF what you want after that, use Linq, entity sql etc. The classes generated are generated using templates which can be edited in the integrated template editor. Also, the classes are generated into separate files, so no more 1 big blob of code in 1 file, and organized per project, so entities in 1 project, context + edmx in another, so you have better separation of code so you can reference the entity project elsewhere without also referencing the context there.

I will be able to manage large database and only drawback will be that if there is changes to database I will have to re-generate code from outside of Visual studio?

yep. LLBLGen Pro also supports model first btw, can generate DDL SQL scripts to update your databases, so you can manage the database schemas + the entity model in 1 project. :)

LLBLGen Pro's designer has been tested with projects with over 2500 entities, so it can take fairly large databases ;)

Hope this helps

(disclaimer: I wrote LLBLGen Pro)

Frans Bouma
  • 8,259
  • 1
  • 27
  • 28
  • Thanks! Nothing better than reply from someone who knows :) I read about stored procs somewhere in forums, it's not an official knowledge :) Are you guys doing discounts to startups? :) – katit Sep 03 '11 at 10:14
  • The stored procs remark perhaps comes from the fact that we don't support mapping entity operations to procs currently (EF designer does this). For the rest, we do support proc calls which fetch strong types and procs which you can call which do things (action procs). No, sorry, no discounts to startups :). – Frans Bouma Sep 03 '11 at 14:48