Introduction

Entity Framework is an Object Relational Mapper (ORM) tool from Microsoft that has been an extremely popular ORM tool from the time it was available. It enables developers to create data-centric applications by programming against a conceptual model rather than the relational model thereby solving the impedance mismatch between the way data is represented in the application and how it is actually stored in the database.

This article discusses the top Entity Framework and Entity Framework Core tools and extensions. The tools and extensions discussed in this article include the following: -

Tools

• Devart Entity Developer
• Entity Framework Visual Editor
• nHydrate ORM for Entity Framework
• EF Core Power Tools
• CatFactory

Extensions

• Microsoft.EntityFrameworkCore.AutoHistory
• EFCore.BulkExtensions
• Entity Framework Plus
• Microsoft.EntityFrameworkCore.UnitOfWork
• EfCore.InMemoryHelpers
• EntityFrameworkCore.Cacheable

Discussion on Entity Framework Tools

This section presents a discussion on the popular Entity Framework Tools.

Devart Entity Developer

Entity Developer from Devart is a very powerful modeling and code generation tool, an ORM tool to be more precise. Entity developer lets you design your data access layer visually - at the drop of a hat. Since the data access layer generated by Devart contains automated and generated code, chances of error are minimal.

The official website of Entity Developer states: “Entity Developer can help you design models for various .NET ORMs in one unified interface. You can get support for all ORMs in one tool, or you may purchase a separate edition, working with one of the supported ORMs.”

The solution allows using Model-First and Database-First approaches to design the model and generate C## or Visual Basic .NET code. It supports creating all kinds of mapping, such as table splitting, mapping entity to several tables, complex types, inheritance hierarchies, creating entities from SELECT statements and methods from SQL code, etc.

In addition to standalone visual ORM designer and Visual Studio add-in, Entity Developer also provides a console application. It can generate a model from the database, code from the model, create and update the database from model scripts via the command line.

Reference: https://www.devart.com/entitydeveloper/

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