Casey Charlton - Insane World

Hang the code, and hang the rules. They're more like guidelines anyway

ADO .NET Entity Framework Vote of No Confidence

Instead of repeating amongst us why the Entity Framework concerns us, an open letter has been written to hopefully persuade Microsoft to reconsider the Entity Framework, or at least some major aspects of it. To save me repeating it, here is what Dave Laribee said:

A number of people have worked on an open letter to Microsoft and the
Entity Framework team. It outlines the various deficiencies in the EF
specifically related to concepts a lot of us value as solid working
practice. Every effort has been made to balance honesty with diplomacy
and cooperation.

http://efvote.wufoo.com/forms/ado-net-entity-framework-vote-of-no-confidence/

I'd encourage you all to sign if (and only if) this is something you
agree with and please spread the word.

Please read it carefully and understand where this is going ... if you agree - please sign it, and perhaps we can move Microsoft a little closer to some of the practices we feel are important.

Published Jun 24 2008, 08:02 AM by Casey Charlton

Filed under: Practices and Principles, Rants, .NET, Architecture

Comments

Cliff said:

I have read the letter and I fully support the reasons in it why Microsoft should reconsider the design of the entity framework.

But I still have a problem with the used terminology in it. In the letter the term "entity-based applications" is used for applications I think should be named "model driven architectured" applications. With the entity framework microsoft provided a way to build these so called "entity based" applications, which are in fact data driven applications.

Does anyone remember what an ER model stands for ?

I quote wikipedia on this:

An entity-relationship model (ERM) is an abstract conceptual representation of structured data. Entity-relationship modeling is a relational schema database modeling method, used in software engineering to produce a type of conceptual data model of a system, often a relational database.

This is what Microsoft provided us with: entities without behaviour; but this is totally not what the community wants.

# June 24, 2008 4:01 AM

GrabBag said:

As was announced initially (as far as I can tell) on Bil Simser's blog, some concerned citizens of

# June 24, 2008 11:21 PM

anonymous said:

Cutting off Their Noses to Spite Their Faces

Open Letter

Dear EF Petitions,

I have read the online petition and don't know what you aim to gain from this? Complaining about whether implicit lazy loading and canonical shared models should be supported is ridiculous in a beta product. Although, your criticism was constructive creating a public forum is frankly "Cutting off your noses to spite your face ". I'm personally dismayed with the MVPs who signed, they should know better. Most of you have direct connections into the product team and can express these opinions directly to them. Why do this in public? I have a lot of friends in Microsoft not just because they are business colleagues but hard working individuals who have spent 11 hour days trying to create something unique. What if you were told your code is crap… see what I mean?

I think that you’re missing the point with the EF. Although it has issues, it’s the first issue. I would like to see of your code to see if you get it right first time.

The transparent approach announcement will prevent this type of thing happening again. If you have this press release why don’t you back down? Personal glory.. or just kicking the big guy?

Anonymous

# June 27, 2008 3:30 PM

Casey Charlton said:

@anonymous

You are free to sign or ignore the petition. Your view would also hold more water if you were to put your name to it rather than hide.

Whichever way you think of EF, the fact that so many well respected MVPs signed the petition should make you consider what they are agreeing with very carefully. Many of them have significant experience of ORM frameworks, and of PI, and many of them have actually been directly involved with MS long before this petition.

However, you are again free to agree, disagree, or start your own blog to explain why you think the things mentioned are not important.

# June 30, 2008 2:43 AM