Is there an equivalent to NHibernate's <component> in Entity Framework?

Question

We are studying which ORM technology we could use in our project, more specially NHibernate vs. Entity Framework 4.

One nice thing in NHibernate is the possibility to map several columns to a custom type, thanks to the "component" mapping option. That is, I can map a group of columns as being a property of a given specified type, like this :

    Component<MyCustomType>(e => e.CreatedBy,
        p =>
        {
            p.Map(customTypeItem => customTypeItem .prop1, "column1");
            p.Map(customTypeItem  => customTypeItem .prop2, "column2");
        });

I haven't found a similar feature in Entity Framework 4. Does it exist ? or is there a similar functionality ?

Answer 1

Don't know much about NHibernate, but you can try EF4's Complex Type Objects.

You define them on the actual entities on your EDMX (Add -> Complex Type), as opposed to scalar properties.

Haven't tried it before - but maybe it suits your scenario.