Customer Reviews

Entity Framework 4.0 Recipes: A Problem-Solution Approach (Expert's Voice in .NET)

5 star:		(16)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

The Kindle version is so incomplete as to be completely worthless. Almost none of the images or example code that is referenced made it into the Kindle version from the print version.

I have learned a lot from this book and used some methods in the book for my application, so I am a grateful reader. Since this book has been praised by so many reviews, I thought it would be most useful for me to state the strengths of this book quickly then follow it with my reservations that prevented me from giving 5 stars to it.

It is very readable and well organized. It is more than a collection of recipes because the first few chapters could give a beginner a good start on EF. Some people may think it has a lot of redundancy by providing a complete list of the code for each recipe, I personally like the completeness (I have the eBook version so the thickness does not bother me at all).

Here are my reservations:

1. There are three methods to query a conceptual model in EF - LINQ to Entities, Entity SQL, Query builder methods. This could be confusing to novice readers. The book mixes all of them and it may be the best approach to mix them to achieve the most elegant code, but I wish the author could share the rationale of each mixture which can be very educational.

2. Each recipe is a method to solve a problem with a specific approach but it may not be the best overall method. I wish the book could clearly point out this. A typical example is recipe 4-3 which is a method for assigning a value to a property with code during data saving. This is a very common scenario for data entry applications (e.g. setting the user ID value which is not entered by the user for each record) and it is usually achieved by a single line of code in an event handler of a control. In the case of the recipe, it can be handled by one statement in the ItermInserting handler of the DetailsView, but the recipe uses a pure EF way of creating a partial method to intercept SavingChanges event.

3. I think the best way to achieve a solid data model is to have a solid database design and the EF conceptual model should just be a reflection of that. EF has matured a lot but the latest version EF 4.0 still has some glitches or undesirable behaviors. It is quite possible that someone may have to recreate the model from the database and it may happen many times. If a lot of "custom" modifications are made to EF model, all of them have to be repeated and this may require a lot of work, good documentation or memory. The book has a lot recipes doing exact this and some of them even get into the XML code editing. I wish the book could clearly point out the caveats of doing this.

This is absolutely the book to have if you are programming with Entity Framework. This book covers all kinds modeling scenarios, improving performance (this was really important for me), querying using both linq and entity SQL, POCO, n-tier applications, and a bunch of other stuff.

The cool thing about this book is that it's full of examples, tons of code that actually works, and has a bunch of stuff I've never seen anywhere else about EF.

The book is very well organized and the author has a good writing style. Everything is right to the point.

I just do not think you can do without this book if you are going to do anything besides play around with the Entity Framework.

This book is handy because it shows you how to work around limitations in the designer (there are many) to achieve what is desired. Trust me, there are many normal things you want to do with a relational schema that the designer cannot handle (such as link tables). The authors give straightforwards instructions how to get around the designer limitations without having to hand edit the edmx file after each modification (something I've had to do quite a bit).

I do share the criticism one other reader raised - that the common steps are repeated add nauseum, but in some ways I guess that is like any recipe book, so I suppose you could argue that's the way it should be done.

Until the updated Lerman book comes out(and perhaps beyond - it's hard to know), this book will be very useful to anyone diving into EF 4.0 development and will save you a lot of frustration.

Have been using Entity Framework for almost 2 years (starting back in the beta days!).

Straight-forward in the beginning, Entity Framework can become complex quickly, as you begin implementing complicated business rules and processing operations.

Here, "Entity Framework 4.0 Recipes" is a life-safer as it provides you concise, easy-to-follow, step-by-step examples on resolving the wide variety of questions you could encounter.

Cleverly, the authors (Tenny and Hirani), invested considerable time monitoring the Entity Framework forums, identifying recurring questions and delivering thier problem-solving approach.

Bottom line: This book is "must-have" as it will save you hours of time and frustration researching solutions to the various questions you may encoutner when using Entity Framework. Do not start your project without it!

Couple this book with "Programming Entity Framework", by Julia Lerman, and you will have all the ammunition you need to successfully work Entity Framework.

If you have more questions, feel free to email me at robvettor@hotmail.com


- rob

This is excellent book with a lot real life examples. Usually developers think in terms of database. Table maps to an object, LINQ to SQL kind of approach.

However EF4.0 gives you ability to map your objects to part of the table or to multiple tables. It shows you how inheritance can be represented in database.

Even if you not going to use EF in your working environment, still this book gives you a lot of ideas and best practices to think of.

This book gives great examples to follow and solve problems when using Entity Framework. It has extensive recipes which you can follow to solve Entity Framework problems. The recipes cover most of the areas one needs in order to use Entity Framework. The recipes show examples using both Linq and esql and when necesary builder methods that can be used on the model.

I've read this book in both a front-to-back approach and also just jumped forward when I had an immediate challenge that I needed answers for. I'm amazed at how much I could learn by going cover to cover (I found that skimming worked well - just being aware of features is great - referencing sections for details at a later date). Additionally, each example is so well put together that on multiple occasions I jumped into later sections of the book and had complete answers to the problem at hand.

Great resource!

This book covers just about every corner of EF4 with clear examples. As a previous reviewer already noted, a few pages could have been saved by eliminating redundant setup that they included with *every* recipe, but still, that doesn't take away from the book one bit in my opinion.

Some people are born to be great teachers.
The authors of this book are definitely among them.

I have only a very brief hands-on exposure to EF (Entity Framework), and it was for .NET 3.5.
Among other things, I had to change the foreign key values in a self-referencing SQL Server table so that the foreign key now "points" to another primary key. It's very similar to the classic example of moving an entire subtree in a hierarchy structure under another "parent" (into another subtree).
The project was on an extremely tight schedule, and after wasting an hour or so trying to figure out the EntityKey stuff, I gave up and used good old classic ADO.NET (SqlConnection, SqlCommand, etc.).
The problem was caused by one of the very annoying deficiencies in EF 3.5, which were fixed by Microsoft in the EF 4.0 (.NET 4.0) release, along with quite a few other improvements.

Essentially, EF is a very compelling replacement for "classic" ADO.NET, and even for the not-so-old LINQ-to-SQL.

This book contains a lot of short concise "recipes" for practically every conceivable "real-world" situation you might have when using a database from .NET.
Needless to say, it has an example for my situation (described above), too.

Unlike most other technical books, this one has a much more practical structure:
1. A short Chapter 1 gives you an overview of the basic concepts and principles of EF 4.0.
2 - ... and then you jump right into writing real code!..

You can use this book as a manual for a thorough study of Entity Framework 4.
And/or, you can use it as [probably, the best] reference material for your own project challenges.

Each recipe is only a few pages long (mostly, code snippets), and it contains just enough theory for a novice to understand the code sample.

At the same time that the book can be used as a reference, it also walks you through the entire EF from simple stuff to more complex and less-often used scenarios.

So far, I'm approximately 1/4 through the book, and I can't stop reading it. By the way, it's also a very easy read.

I would have given this book 10 stars, but regretfully, 5 is the maximum.

My recommendation: if you are a .NET developer, get this book. You'll love it.