Visual Studio 2015 Preview and Entity Framework

Today we are pleased to announce the availability of Visual Studio 2015 Preview. You can download it and read more about the release on the Visual Studio team blog.

This post details the places that Entity Framework is included in Visual Studio 2015 Preview. Our team is concurrently working on two versions of Entity Framework, both of which are included in this preview.

 

Entity Framework 6.1.2 (Beta 1)

This release includes Beta 1 of Entity Framework 6.1.2 runtime and tooling. EF6.1.2 includes a number bug fixes and community contributions, you can see a list of the changes included in EF6.1.2 on our CodePlex site.

The Entity Framework 6.1.2 runtime is included in a number of places in this release.

  • The runtime will be installed if you create a new model using the Entity Framework Tools in a project that does not already have the EF runtime installed.
  • The runtime is pre-installed in new ASP.NET projects, depending on the project template you select.

If you encounter any issues using this beta of the 6.1.2 release be sure to report them on our CodePlex site so that we can look at fixing them for RTM.

 

Entity Framework 7

EF7 is the next major version of Entity Framework and is still in the early stages of development.  EF7 is a lightweight and extensible version of EF that enables new platforms and new data stores.

You can find more detailed information about EF7 at https://aka.ms/AboutEF7. The page includes design information, links to relevant blog posts, and instruction about trying out the latest builds.

Visual Studio 2015 Preview includes a pre-release version of the EF7 runtime that is installed in new ASP.NET 5 projects.

Quality of EF7

We’d love to have you try out EF7 but just remember there are still a lot of rough edges and missing functionality. The EF7 project involves some major changes in the core of Entity Framework, you can read more about this in our recent ‘EF7 – v1 or v7?’ blog post.

This release is designed to give you an idea of what the experience will be like and you will quickly hit limitations if you deviate from the examples.

If you have a keen eye you may notice that the EF7 package is marked as ‘Beta 1’. This is a side effect of being part of a larger set of previews that are currently marked as Beta and we do not consider the EF7 code base to be at a level of quality or functionality where we would typically mark it as beta. This is just a result of the complexities of having a series of smaller autonomous products that are also involved in an all up release.