What is the difference between a "Model" and a "Context" in Entity Framework jargon?

Question

What is the difference between a "model" and a "context" in Entity Framework jargon?

I'm using the Entity Framework database first approach in an application. These terms have come up many times as I've been reading different forums and articles on EF implementation strategies. I can't seem to figure out how these two are different (not even with just entity framework, but with software development in general). People use the words as if they are different, but then some people seem to use the words interchangeably.

Answer 1

Context

This is easy. The context is either the DbContext or the older ObjectContext class that is the core of the entity framework data access layer. It supplies transparent database access through strong typed sets of entities, tracks and saves changes, manages database transactions and connections, and contains a number of utility methods to facilitate all kinds of data access tasks (esp. DbContext).

Model

This can be two (or three) things.

• The data model, or store model. Which is the relational model of the database underlying the EF data access layer.
• The conceptual model, or class model. Which is the .Net class model that represents the database. This model can either be generated by EF (database-first) or it can be an existing class model (code first). The conceptual model and the store model are linked through mapping, so EF knows how to populate .Net classes from database records and, conversely, how to save .Net classes to the database.
• Some people refer to the classes in the conceptual model as "models". This is not wrong, but I prefer to use the name entities for this.

So context and model are two quite different things. You might say that the context is the middleman between two different types of models.

Answer 2

Loosely speaking a context relates to a database connection or session wherea the model is the mapping between tables, views, etc to data access object classes (i.e., objects that will contain the data)