Characteristics of ADO.NET Entity Framework 4.0

Question

Write few characteristics of ADO.NET Entity Framework 4.0.

Answer 1

It is introduced in the .NET Framework 4.0 and involves following new features:

a) Persistence Ignorance - It allows to define Plain Old CLR Objects (POCO) which are independent of any specific persistence technology.
b) Deferred or Lazy Loading -  It specifies that, entities which are related can be loaded automatically when it is required.
c) Self-Tracking Entities - It refers to the entities which tracks their own changes. Such changes can be passed across the process boundaries and saved in the database.
c) Model-First Development – It allows to create our own EDM and then generates the relational model (database) from EDM with matching tables and relations.
d) Model-Defined Functions - It enables to use the functions which are described in the conceptual schema definition language (CSDL).
e) Built-in Functions - It allows to use built-in SQL Server functions directly in our queries.