Data & Analytics

VSW10 Stop Using Entity Framework as Just a DTO Provider!

11/20/2024

2:00pm - 3:15pm

Level: Intermediate

Chris Klug

Developer

Active Solution

Entity Framework is a great tool to retrieve your data from the database. However, it is also a bit complicated, and requires that you read a bit more than just the "Getting Started with EF" page. Unfortunately, this seems to be what most developers do.

At least I think that is why I keep seeing people using it to replicate the database structure in their code with DTOs. This is not the way it was intended to be used. It was intended to persist and retrieve data for you C# object. Not just DTOs.

And if one more person tells me "we used a micro-ORM for this project, since it does the same thing as EF but without the complexity", I will blow a gasket!

Why not join me, Chris Klug, for a look at how we can do better? In this talk, I will show you how we can use proper OOP and still use EF to persist and retrieve our objects.

You will learn:

  • That EF can do more than DTO retrieval
  • That it might be a good idea to use EF to fetch more complex objects
  • To see how EF can support retrieving DDD style entities