Is Entity Framework more than a very time consuming way to save a little time?

Question

I got about two chapters into a 1000+ page on entity framework and got discouraged and went back to good old stored procedures.

What is the consensus (if any) on Entity Framework? It would be interesting to hear from folks who have finished projects based on EF to see if they think it was worth all the effort.

I've been tinkering around with T4 templates a bit and found a way to generate my SPROCs and DTOs just the way I like them without messing around with EF. Am I missing something?

Answer 1

I personally like the abstraction and easy integration with LINQ that is possible with Entity framework, having an ORM instead of interacting with SQL server directly is huge in terms of productivity.

On the other hand it's by no means complete - for anything that requires bulk-processing, i.e. large table delete's or full text search you still have to do store queries - but at least it minimizes the number of them that I have to deal with to those scenarios.

Answer 2

I've been tinkering around with T4 templates a bit and found a way to generate my SPROCs and DTOs just the way I like them without messing around with EF. Am I missing something?

Not necessarily. The process you described is the basic reasoning behind any ORM.

The Entity Framework provides a few things that your T4 templates may not:

1. A Microsoft-standard way of creating data classes
2. The ability to scale into large applications
3. The ability to support different data stores with the same code.
4. Flexibility

EF is part of a larger picture that encompasses things like built-in data validation, lazy loading, multi-tier design, and testability. If you are building very small applications that will never grow into larger applications, you may not need these things.