Announcing Entity Framework Core 5.0 Preview 4
Jeremy Likness
Today we are excited to announce the fourth preview release of Entity Framework Core (EF Core) 5.0.
The fourth previews of .NET 5 and ASP.NET Core 5.0 are also available now. Be sure to check out the full release of Blazor WebAssembly 3.2.0!
Prerequisites
The previews of EF Core 5.0 require .NET Standard 2.1. This means:
- EF Core 5.0 runs on .NET Core 3.1; it does not require .NET 5.
- This may change in future previews depending on how the plan for .NET 5 evolves.
- EF Core 5.0 runs on other platforms that support .NET Standard 2.1.
- EF Core 5.0 will not run on .NET Standard 2.0 platforms, including .NET Framework.
How to get EF Core 5.0 previews
EF Core is distributed exclusively as a set of NuGet packages. For example, to add the SQL Server provider to your project, you can use the following command using the dotnet tool:
dotnet add package Microsoft.EntityFrameworkCore.SqlServer --version 5.0.0-preview.4.20220.10
The EF Core packages published today are:
- Microsoft.EntityFrameworkCore – The main EF Core package
- Microsoft.EntityFrameworkCore.SqlServer – Database provider for Microsoft SQL Server and SQL Azure
- Microsoft.EntityFrameworkCore.Sqlite – Database provider for SQLite
- Microsoft.EntityFrameworkCore.Cosmos – Database provider for Azure Cosmos DB
- Microsoft.EntityFrameworkCore.InMemory – The in-memory database provider
- Microsoft.EntityFrameworkCore.Tools – EF Core PowerShell commands for the Visual Studio Package Manager Console
- Microsoft.EntityFrameworkCore.Design – Shared design-time components for EF Core tools
- Microsoft.EntityFrameworkCore.SqlServer.NetTopologySuite – SQL Server support for spatial types
- Microsoft.EntityFrameworkCore.Sqlite.NetTopologySuite – SQLite support for spatial types
- Microsoft.EntityFrameworkCore.Proxies – Lazy-loading and change-tracking proxies
- Microsoft.EntityFrameworkCore.Abstractions – Decoupled EF Core abstractions
- Microsoft.EntityFrameworkCore.Relational – Shared EF Core components for relational database providers
- Microsoft.EntityFrameworkCore.Analyzers – C# analyzers for EF Core
- Microsoft.EntityFrameworkCore.Sqlite.Core – Database provider for SQLite without a packaged native binary
We have also published the 5.0 preview 4 release of the Microsoft.Data.Sqlite.Core ADO.NET provider.
Installing dotnet ef
As with EF Core 3.0 and 3.1, the dotnet ef command-line tool is no longer included in the .NET Core SDK. Before you can execute EF Core migration or scaffolding commands, you’ll have to install this package as either a global or local tool.
To install the preview tool globally, first uninstall any existing version with:
dotnet tool uninstall --global dotnet-ef
Then install with:
dotnet tool install --global dotnet-ef --version 5.0.0-preview.4.20220.10
It’s possible to use this new version of dotnet ef with projects that use older versions of the EF Core runtime.
What’s new in EF Core 5 Preview 4
We maintain documentation covering new features introduced into each preview.
Some of the highlights from preview 4 are called out below. This preview also includes several bug fixes.
Configure database precision/scale in model
Precision and scale for a property can now be specified using the model builder. For example:
modelBuilder
.Entity<Blog>()
.Property(b => b.Numeric)
.HasPrecision(16, 4);
Precision and scale can still be set via the full database type, such as “decimal(16,4)”.
Documentation is tracked by issue #527.
Specify SQL Server index fill factor
The fill factor can no be specified when creating an index on SQL Server. For example:
modelBuilder
.Entity<Customer>()
.HasIndex(e => e.Name)
.HasFillFactor(90);
Documentation is tracked by issue #2378.
Daily builds
EF Core previews are aligned with .NET 5 previews. These previews tend to lag behind the latest work on EF Core. Consider using the daily builds instead to get the most up-to-date EF Core features and bug fixes.
As with the previews, the daily builds do not require .NET 5; they can be used with GA/RTM release of .NET Core 3.1.
Documentation and feedback
EF Core docs has a new landing page! The main page for Entity Framework documentation has been overhauled to provide you with a hub experience. We hope this new format helps you find the documentation you need faster and with fewer clicks.
The starting point for all EF Core documentation is docs.microsoft.com/ef/.
Please file issues found and any other feedback on the dotnet/efcore GitHub repo.
Helpful Short Links
The following short links are provided for easy reference and access.
Main documentation: https://aka.ms/efdocs
Issues and feature requests for EF Core: https://aka.ms/efcorefeedback
Entity Framework Roadmap: https://aka.ms/efroadmap
What’s new in EF Core 5.x? https://aka.ms/efcore5
Thank you from the team
A big thank you from the EF team to everyone who has used EF over the years!
Arthur Vickers |
Andriy Svyryd |
Brice Lambson |
Jeremy Likness |
lajones |
Maurycy Markowski |
Shay Rojansky |
Smit Patel |
Thank you to our contributors!
A big thank you to the following community members who have already contributed code or documentation to the EF Core 5 release! (List is in chronological order of first contribution to EF Core 5).
aevitas
Alaa Masoud
Aleksandar Manukov
Amr Badawy
Anthony Monterrosa
Ben Brandt
Ben McCallum
Clarence Cai
Christophe Gijbels
Jiri Cincura
Vincent Costel
Dmitry Shuvaev
Eric St-Georges
Erik Ejlskov Jensen
Christopher Davis
Ivaylo Kenov
Jacob Foshee
Jeremy Zagorski
Jacob Viau
Max K.
lohoris-crane
Loïc Sharma
lokalmatador
Marius Gundersen
Roman Marusyk
Matthias Lischka
MaxG117
MHDuke
Mike Surcouf
Neil Bostrom
Nícolas Michels
Obi Oberoi
Josh Studt
Ozan Topal
Paul Middleton
Raj
Peter Huang
Rafael Almeida Santos
Patrik Husfloen
Richard Marskell
sguitardude
Sam Hobbs
Sven
Vlad
vslee
liweihan
Youssef Victor
1iveowl
Thomas Levesque
Aleksander Kovač
Leonid Tsarev
Konstantin Triger
Ivan Maximov
Dzmitry Lahoda
Bruno Logerfo
Josh Withee
Frans Bouma
Matthew Lieder
Paulo Morgado
Mickaël Derriey
Laurence King
Oskar Josefsson
bdebaere
Bhargavi Annadevara
Alexander Täschner
Jesse Hufstetler
Light
Dark
13 comments
Is it me the only one who does not see any significant progress in EF from release to release? For instance, when will be able to use stored procedures in updates?
Although i agree on, seems to be very minor updating…between releases.
i don’t really agree with “stored procedures in updates?” , you should be more clear with what you feature you are referring to.
(As there was stuff added ages ago that may or may not cover this.)
Also depending on what you mean but SP’s kind of defeat the whole point of EF.
…. progress is progress, would like to see more features from ef6 make its way through.
Namely the ordering on columns when using code first.
Good stuff non the less keep up the work!
Store procedures in updates: EF 6 allows you to substitute the plain “update”, “insert” o “delete” from the ORM by calls to stored procedures.
“but SP’s kind of defeat the whole point of EF”: store procedures are more efficient than SQL generated on the fly and open the door to true encapsulation of the database and a better security paradigm.
In Ef core you can still execute raw sql just like in EF6.
and open the door to true encapsulation of the database and a better security paradigm.”
When query is complex, sure creating a SP will probably save you time and yield you the performance you wanting much quicker when complex, as it doesn’t have to be check for interpreted and checked.
C is more efficient than c# (im just trying to show that where is a different way of thinking about it)
IQueryable and dynamic Expression tree’s are extremely powerful and allow for very “on the fly” dynamic generation.
EF is an encapsulation of the database so you can swap database providers with little to no effort.
“better security paradigm.”
personally i would think it the opposite.
i dont actually know enough technically on this.
i know for at least 1 point , Ef makes it safe from sql injection.
Perhaps you could share why you think this is true.
Sp have advantages sure.. like inplaces alters/changes… but beyond this…
maybe your experience with EF as a tool is perhaps limited.
EF Core 3.0 had “significant progress” that utterly destroyed performance for queries in our application. So much so that we elected to stay on 2.2. I can do without any more “significant progress” from these guys.
We are tracking the mapping of stored procedures here:
https://github.com/dotnet/efcore/issues/245
Jeremy
Cool 😊
I wonder if the new record types introduced in C# 9 will work with EF Core 5 out of the box…
I imagine these will be useful particularly for owned entities.
Nothing new. Useless without GUI for cross-platform
GUIs are useless.
What GUI capabilities are you looking for?
I love the part about depending on the plans for .NET 5 you may drop support for .NET Core 3.1. Kind of like what you did with dropping .NET Framework. I think you are wrong to require .NET Standard 2.1. You should go back to 2.0 for compatibility and to allow .NET Framework apps to use it. What are you going to do next, make it so that unless you are on the latest minor version of .NET, it won’t work? After all the years of breaking changes in EF, this is ridiculous.
Entity Framework 6 was built to provide a bridge between .NET Framework and .NET Core and is production-ready and supported.
EF Core 5 will only require .NET 5 if it is necessary to take advantage of new runtime features. The dependency on .NET 5 would not be a breaking change by itself, it would just mean you need to use .NET 5 if you want to migrate to EF Core 5. It doesn’t mean your EF Core 3 code won’t migrate forward.
The team is passionate about preserving as much backwards compatibility with EF Core 3 as possible to ensure the migration is straightforward.
When will you create WCF RIA Services equivallent to Entity Framework?
WCF RIA Services was a cool tool.