The EF team at Microsoft has published a sample database Provider Entity Framework 5 for SQL Server, with support for some of the new EF features.
Following new features in EF 5 are supported in the new sample provider -
- Spatial types
- Table Valued Functions
- Stored Procedures with Multiple Result Sets
However, some things are not included -
This version does not contain a sample provider for Migrations or Code First which currently use a separate provider model.
The project also contains xUnit Tests which, along with testing the sample provider, also show how to build queries using the new features in EF 5.
Entity Framework is a database-independent ORM, and uses the provider model to encapsulate the database specific details. An ADO.NET provider that supports Entity Framework maps the Entity Data Model primitive types to provider types, exposes metadata from the underlying database, handles SQL Generation and more. As such the sample is mainly useful for those developers who want to build their own provider for Entity Framework to support a non-SQL Server database.
You can also read a brief introduction about what is involved in writing an EF enabled ADO.NET provider.
