Programming Entity Framework: Code First

This mini book will act as an extension to Programming Entity Framework 2nd Edition. Code First is an additional means of building a model to be used with the Entity Framework and is creating a lot of excitement in the .NET development community. The reader will begin with an overview of what Code First is, why it was created, how it fits into the Entity Framework and when to use it over the alternatives. Next the reader will gain an understanding of how Code First’s built in conventions work and how to override them with configuration-whether they choose to use attribute based Data Annotations or strongly typed Fluent API configurations. The mini-book will then review the modeling possibilities of Code First, looking first at the impact of its conventions and then demonstrating how to override that behavior (and its impact on the database) first with the Annotations and then with the Fluent API. The book will also explore how Code First Database initialization works, the options it provides and how they impact your application development and database. Finally the reader will get a chance to see Code First in action in a small application. Because more complex application development with Code First will depend on an understanding of the DbContext API, which is the focus of Minibook #2, readers will see additional application scenarios with Code First in that following mini-book.