Download Programming Entity Framework Julia Lerman 9780596520281 Books

Product details Paperback 832 pages Publisher O'Reilly Media; 1 edition (February 13, 2009) Language English ISBN-10 059652028X

Programming Entity Framework Julia Lerman 9780596520281 Books Reviews

• If you're looking into learning ADO.NET Entity Framework, this is the book to have. The book is concise, very detailed, and well-written-- and that's usually rare to find in most technical books these days. The author often sheds some insights on remote subjects that are related, and gives the most-straightforward answers. Apart from other technical books, I can really tell that she took a lot of time and effort on making sure that every single topic is well-understood. I felt that she's actually speaking my language instead of trying to impress me with jargon that will just throw me off. Having said that, it's a natural gift to communicate and be able to explain complicate things in the most simple manner. I wish sometimes that every author out there shares the same passion of teaching as her.
  
  Aside from the book being well-written, the combination of screen shots, notes and codes in both VB and C# makes the material easier to "stick". The reason for having both languages is the fact that C# and VB has some language distinctions that may not well translate easily into the other language, and vice-versa. It helps to have both just for reference. The book is filled with every information that you'll need to know to work with Entity Framework, and every options are explored as far as utilizing the available features. People with no experience regarding Entity Framework or LINQ to SQL will be able to pick up things easily since it all starts with the basics and build upon the previous examples.
  
  Overall, I highly recommend this book to anyone who are interested in getting to know Entity Framework from the inside-out. The book is well-written and the topics are easy to understand. If you've been wondering about the intricacy of EF such what the underlying metadata does, or how queries are being executed, among other things, then this is it.
• I'm a seasoned VB6/PHP/Green Screen developer who has floated around .NET but never gone beyond tinkering. Entity Framework (and LINQ and MVC) have convinced me that it's time to jump fully on the .NET wagon.
  
  I'm loving this book because while it assumes the reader knows how to write a program, it doesn't assume that the reader is a .NET programmer. It explains Entity Framework excellently while also explaining Visual Studio/.NET concepts succinctly, without wasting the reader's time explaining what an integer is.
  
  The many pointers to web resources for further information are greatly appreciated and increase the book's value to someone, like me, coming to .NET rather late in the game without bogging down the book for seasoned .NET programmers.
  
  Finally, the author's use of a "brown field" application for the examples, complete with "legacy typos" and examples of how EF can free you of legacy design flaws while leaving the legacy intact show that the author has been in the trenches writing real code and has a great deal of wisdom beyond Entity Framework to share.
• Entity Framework (EF) will be a foundational technology for Microsoft for many years to come...just poke around Microsoft's site and see how many other departments are using it outside of the ADO.NET team. There already are database EF adapters for Oracle and IBM's DB2 amongst other databases...Oracle and IBM see the future and so should you. You can add EF to the list of must-learn technologies for the Microsoft platform which also includes WCF, WF, LINQ and WPF/SilverLight. Combine EF and WPF/SilverLight, using MVVM for the Presentation Model, with Prism/Unity for modular design and cross cutting concerns (validation, logging, cache, security, real-time constraints, monitoring, ?business rules) you will have a powerful architectural infrastructure. Domain Driven Design (DDD) is the architectural mindset Microsoft is blueprinting with EF a cornerstone of DDD implementation. Model Driven Development will mature in the future "Oslo" effort and EF will figure prominently. DDD is as much a team discipline and mindset as it is an architectural pattern that EF facilitates. In EF version 1 (EFv1), combined with present day modeling tools, is already better than OMG's MDA(Model Driven Architecture) in building real world applications in my opinion. EFv1 currently supports the Active Record pattern (as does LINQ-to-SQL according to Dino Esposito in Microsoft® .NET Architecting Applications for the Enterprise (PRO-Developer)) with further support for Domain Model pattern in the upcoming EF4 (i.e. EF version 2 on .NET 4.0). EF is more than an ORM, but EFv1 is not without well placed criticism of shortcomings implementing DDD and impairment of various development methodologies such as Agile. Nevertheless going forward EF, especially with upcoming EF4 will more fully follows DDD principles, will be everywhere, so you might is well start now. The concepts will be the same in EF4 with added benefits of "model first" design, support for POCO (plain old CLR objects), N-Tier, Reports, and improved Testability as well as the niggling issue of "pluralization". NHiberbnate, an open source project supported by RedHat, reportedly has many of these features planned for EF4 now, but does not have the weight of a broad Microsoft strategy behind it. Choosing NHibernate over EF, is an important strategic/emotional decision. Ideablade's DevForce , which builds off EFv1 now and soon EF4 when it is released, helps with some of these pain points and more now....but you still need to understand EF. Architecting software is difficult and there are no tools to magically create well designed architectural patterns. EF as a foundational component will put you on a solid footing and put you in a DDD frame of mind, while doing a good deal of grunt work for you, so you can spend more time on business logic and UI usability.
  
  The table was set with Entity Relationship Modeling by Dr. David Chen in the 70's and garnished by Martin Fowler's Patterns of Enterprise Application Architecture (Addison-Wesley Signature Series) Eric Evans'Domain-Driven Design Tackling Complexity in the Heart of Software and Jimmy Nillsson's Applying Domain-Driven Design and Patterns With Examples in C# and .NET, DDD is now being served to the masses by Microsoft. Julia Lerman with "Programming Entity Framework" does not try to emulate these seminal works. She takes you in a practical step by step approach through EFv1 without being a simplistic Step-by-Step book. The initial examples are simple, but it would be asinine to use Adventure Works in the initial chapters unless you are like Kobayashi at Nathan's hotdog eating contest. I like my hotdogs and concepts one at a time. The examples and databases become more complex as the book goes forward showing the nitty gritty underpinnings and practical applications of EF.
  
  Despite Julia's reluctance to write books, as suggested in her preface, I think she will be on the book publishing treadmill for a long time given the raves about this book, EF's strategic positioning by Microsoft and the attendant demand for well explained intricacies of this emergent technology. Her book is wonderfully explanatory, especially compared to the other book on the market regarding LINQ and EF. I predict she will not be able to resist readers holding up their lighters, like at a concert begging for an encore, especially with EF4 around the corner followed by EF5.