EF Model First and Database First Alternatives?

Question

Since MSFT has officially abandoned Model First and Database First, does anyone have alternative suggestions for this functionality? One I am considering is DevArt Entity Developer. Can anyone else suggest any other alternatives I should consider?

A while back before MSFT announced dropping Database First, I was considering using Sparx EA to maintain the database, then use EF Database First to update the model from the database, but they refuse to acknowledge any need to now generate Code First from their design model even though Database First is no longer supported by EF. EA will generate POCO classes, just not any CodeFirst variant, and I don't want to constantly update by hand.

Answer 1

As per your Link, they are not removing Database First design, Code-First is only a name that means your database is represented as a set of POCO C# objects, rather than XML + Designer.

They have REMVOED the designer and .edmx file. But you can still `Reverse Engineer your database to create entities.

From that link:

For Code First you can re-run the reverse engineer process and have it regenerate your model. This works fine in basic scenarios, but you have to be careful how you customize the model otherwise your changes will get reverted when the code is re-generated. There are some customizations that are difficult to apply without editing the scaffolded code.

Them removing the designer, and making EF Code-First only, does not mean you HAVE to create entities first in your c# then have them generate the database. All it means is that you database will be mapped via POCO's rather than .edmx.

And believe me, .edmx + designer is nothing but problems!!!!

If you are not going to be happy with the reverse-engineering results, or adding new tables/relationships via code, than I'm almost certain someone will create a fancy Drag+Drop Designer as a 3rd Party Add-on. But to me + most of devs i know, Designer is only for beginners, as soon as you start doing something or customizing it, you have much better, cleaner, easier to understand control in code via annotations + fluent mappings.