Entity Framework Core: Microsoft’s ORM goes cross-platform

In conjunction with two other critical open source releases, Microsoft this week made its Entity Framework Core 1.0.0 available, providing a cross-platform version of the company’s flagship data access technology.

The open source framework was introduced Monday along with .Net Core and ASP.Net Core, which provide open source cross-platform implementations of .Net technologies.

Entity Framework Core, or EF Core, is a lightweight, extensible version of Entity Framework. Microsoft said. Entity Framework has featured an ORM (object-relational mapper) for .Net developers to use relational data via domain-specific objects.

“EF Core is a new code base and very much a v1 product,” Microsoft said, though the developer experience is the same as EF6x and most top-level APIs remain the same. “The new, extensible, and lightweight core has also allowed us to add some features to EF Core that will not be implemented in EF6.x, such as alternate keys and mixed client/database evaluation in Linq queries. At the same time, EF Core is built over a completely new set of core components. This means EF Core doesn’t automatically inherit all the features from EF6.x. Some of these features will show up in future releases — such as lazy loading and connection resiliency other less commonly used features will not be implemented in EF Core,” Microsoft said.

Database engines including SQL Server, MySQL, NpgSQL (postgreSQL) and SQLite are supported by EF Core, and more database providers will be made available soon, Microsoft’s Rowan Miller said. EF Core is recommended for use with applications that target .Net Core, including Universal Windows Platform and ASP.Net Core applications.