Monthly Archives: May 2012

May 28 2012
32 Comments
Entity Framework, T4, Visual Studio

Entity Framework Code First and Pre-generated Views

When working with Entity Framework view generation may take a long time for bigger or complicated models. The workaround for this problem is to use pre-generated views. In case of Database First and Model First approaches you can use T4 templates that will create the pre-generated views (you can find more details here). But what to do when using Code First approach? One possibility is to use Entity Framework Power Tools – just right-click on the file containing your DbContext derived class and select “Optimize Data Model”. Voila – views are created. But what if you need more control, cannot use UI (e.g. you want your build system to create the pre-generated views) or the tool for whatever reason does not work? You can for instance follow this 5 steps:

  • Get Edmx file for your model using EdmxWriter.WriteEdmx() method
  • Retrieve csdl, msl, ssdl from the edmx file and save them
  • From the Visual Studio Command Prompt run EdmGen with mode parameter set to ViewGeneration (i.e. /mode:ViewGeneration)
  • Add the generated C#/VB.Net file to your project
  • Repeat each time you change your model

Easy? Maybe. Error prone? Probably. Cumbersome? For sure. But now there is a third way. Similarly to the T4 templates for Model and Database First workflows I created T4 templates for creating pre-generated views for Code First approach. Now, you would just add the right (C# or VB.Net) template to your project, rename it so that it contains the name of the context you want to create the views for (e.g. MyContext.Views.tt) and generate your views by right clicking the template and selecting “Run Custom Tool” menu option. Note that creating the pre-generated views with the template will take approximately the same amount of time it takes to create views at runtime – you are just doing the work that would be done at runtime at design time. The templates are (temporarily) available here. I will update this post when they are moved to the final location.The templates are available on the Visual Studio Code Gallery. See this post for more details.

Pawel Kadluczka

May 12 2012
15 Comments
Vintage Computing, Visual Studio

Introducing Vintage Studio

Once in a while I get into this nostalgic mood when I want to go back in time and experience again the excitement I had when I got my first computer. It was a Commodore 64. And yes, the nostalgia is about playing M.U.L.E., Rick Dangerous or Kennedy Approach but also (and maybe foremost) about spending time with TurboAssembler trying to open sideborders or figuring out how FLD/FLI/VSP work. Playing retro games is not a problem these days but trying to code is kind of cumbersome. I really loved TurboAssembler and there are features (like numbered bookmarks) I am still missing but the world has moved on. These days we don’t use 5.25” floppies anymore, our processors are a bit faster than 1 MHz, we have access to the Internet at home and instead of using ← 3 to ‘assemble’ we compile with Ctrl+Shift+B or F6 (some people even use a mouse and and an option from the menu). So, I thought it would be nice to combine these two worlds. The release of Visual Studio 2010 helped a lot – the new WPF editor is much easier to extend than before (I started rejecting COM and all its ATL classes in early 2000s) and the MPF project made it possible to code everything in C#. This is how Vintage Studio – a Visual Studio 2010 based IDE for vintage computers – emerged. I created a short video showing the features and how it works (or maybe showing that the workflow – i.e. building, running and debugging – is pretty much the same as you would expect from any VS project). Binaries and source code are available on github. Enjoy!

Pawel Kadluczka

May 08 2012
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Entity Framework Link

EF5 Sample Provider Published

We have published a new version of the sample provider that supports features introduced in the Entity Framework 5. It can be downloaded from the MSDN Code Samples Gallery.

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