Getting Started with Entity Framework - Entity Framework 6 Recipes - page 2

1-1. A Brief Tour of the Entity Framework World
Entity Framework is Microsoft's strategic approach to data access technology for building software applications.
Unlike earlier data access technologies, Entity Framework, coupled with Visual Studio, delivers a comprehensive,
model-based ecosystem that enables you to develop a wide range of data-oriented applications, including desktop,
Internet, cloud, and service-based applications, many of which will be covered in this topic.
The History
Entity Framework is not new. The product dates back to Visual Studio 2008 and has come a long way in features and
functionality. Figure 1-1 gives the pictorial history.
Figure 1-1. A short history of the Entity Framework
The first version of Entity Framework was limited, featuring basic ORM support and the ability to implement
a single approach known as Database First , which we thoroughly demonstrate in this topic. Version 4 brought us
another approach to using Entity Framework: Model First, along with full Plain Old CLR Object (POCO) support and
default lazy loading behavior. Soon after, the Entity Framework team released three smaller, or point releases, 4.1
through 4.3, which represented yet another approach to using Entity Framework: Code First. As shown above,
Version 5 of Entity Framework coordinated with the release of the .NET 4.5 framework and Visual Studio 2012,
delivering significant performance improvements along with support for enums, table value functions, spatial types,
the batch import of stored procedures, and deep support with the ASP.NET MVC framework.
Now we are at Version 6 of the Entity Framework. Version 6 delivers asynchronous support for querying and
updates, stored procedure support for updates in Code First, improved performance, and a long list of new features,
which we will focus on in this topic.