Visual Studio “14” CTP 2 and Entity Framework

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Today we’re providing a second CTP of the next version of Visual Studio, to gather your early feedback. For more information on this release, see Visual Studio “14” CTPs. This post covers the places that Entity Framework is included in the release and some limitations to be aware of when using it.

The EF related information for CTP 2 is very similar to what we provided for the first CTP of Visual Studio “14”. In the next preview of Visual Studio “14” we will be updating the EF6.x components to the latest version. The builds of EF7 will also become more usable in future previews as we round out the implementation of the core pieces of the EF7 code base.

 

Entity Framework Tools

As with past versions of Visual Studio, the Entity Framework Tools are included in-the-box. These tools are capable of working with models created with all versions of Entity Framework up to and including EF6.x.

Visual Studio “14” CTP includes an older build of the EF6 tooling which does not include the bug fixes and improvements from the 6.1.0 and 6.1.1 releases. The next preview of Visual Studio “14” will be updated to version 6.1.1 of the tooling.

At this stage, there isn’t a version of the 6.1.0 or 6.1.1 tooling that can be installed on Visual Studio “14”.

 

Entity Framework 6 Runtime

An older build of the EF6 runtime is included in a number of places in Visual Studio “14” CTP. This build does not include the bug fixes and improvements from the 6.1.0 and 6.1.1 releases.

  • 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.

We recommend using NuGet to update to the latest version of the runtime. At the time of writing 6.1.1 was the latest stable release. For detailed information on how to upgrade, see Updating a Package in the NuGet documentation.

PM> Update-Package EntityFramework

The next preview of Visual Studio “14” will be updated to version 6.1.1 of the runtime.

 

Entity Framework 7

We recently blogged about our plans for Entity Framework 7. Visual Studio “14” CTP 2 includes an early preview of ASP.NET vNext, which in turn includes a very early build of EF7. The EF7 runtime is installed in new ASP vNext projects that are created.

As with the first CTP of Visual Studio “14”, this build of EF7 only implements very basic functionality and there are a number of limitations with the features that are implemented. Please bear in mind that this preview 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 code from the default project template.

For more information on what’s included in this build of EF7, see the release notes page on our GitHub project.

We’re making good progress on the EF7 code base, but it is still in the early stages of development. If you want to experiment with a build we would recommend visiting our GitHub wiki for information on using nightly builds. Just remember that there are lots of things that don’t work… seriously… we warned you :)!