Announcing Entity Framework Core 6.0 Preview 6: Configure Conventions

Today, the Entity Framework Core team announces the sixth preview release of EF Core 6.0. The team continues work on the features you helped prioritize. In addition to adding new capabilities, we are closing the gap between EF Core and EF6. Issue #24106 shares details about the differences and our roadmap to eliminate it. We are making progress on features like migrations bundles and implicit ownership in the Azure Cosmos DB provider but are not quite ready for you to test them yet. However, many updates are available right now when you download preview 6 (see the end of this blog post for details on how).

💡 Starting with preview 6, EF Core 6 targets the .NET 6 Target Framework Moniker (TFM).

A few highlights for this release include:

Support for 64-bit identity seed values
Support for new BCL DateOnly and TimeOnly structs for SQLite
Uniquify and validate check constraint names
Pre-convention model configuration
The items on this list

This release supports pre-convention model configuration. Doing an initial discovery of the model based only on DbSet roots was a reasonable approach when it was easy to distinguish likely scalar properties from likely navigation properties. However, as we allow more and more types to be mapped, it has become increasingly problematic to…

Exclude a type as an entity type and therefore avoid trying to bring it and all its properties into the model
Revert a type from being an entity type when a value converter is found or the type is ignored

This results in both bugs and additional overhead. This release, we focused on finding ways to enhance model building so that it can more efficiently figure out what is an entity type and what is not. For example, assume you always store string data as byte arrays. Instead of configuring every single entity, you can use the ConfigureConventions override. It looks like this:

protected override void ConfigureConventions(ModelConfigurationBuilder configurationBuilder)
  {
      configurationBuilder.Properties<string>()
          .HaveConversion<byte[]>()
          .HaveMaxLength(255);

      configurationBuilder.IgnoreAny<INonPersisted>();
  }

We want to hear from you! If you and/or your team are using the Entity Framework Designer (the visual editor for EDMX files in Visual Studio) we’d like to understand how you use the designer and what might be stopping you from migrating to the latest code base. Give us feedback by commenting on issue #25248.

How to get EF Core 6.0 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 6.0.0-preview.6.21352.1

This following table links to the preview 6 versions of the EF Core 6.0 packages and describes what they are used for.

Package	Purpose
Microsoft.EntityFrameworkCore	The main EF Core package that is independent of specific database providers
Microsoft.EntityFrameworkCore.SqlServer	Database provider for Microsoft SQL Server and SQL Azure
Microsoft.EntityFrameworkCore.SqlServer.NetTopologySuite	SQL Server support for spatial types
Microsoft.EntityFrameworkCore.Sqlite	Database provider for SQLite that includes the native binary for the database engine
Microsoft.EntityFrameworkCore.Sqlite.Core	Database provider for SQLite without a packaged native binary
Microsoft.EntityFrameworkCore.Sqlite.NetTopologySuite	SQLite support for spatial types
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; use this to integrate tools like scaffolding and migrations with Visual Studio
Microsoft.EntityFrameworkCore.Design	Shared design-time components for EF Core tools
Microsoft.EntityFrameworkCore.Proxies	Lazy-loading and change-tracking proxies
Microsoft.EntityFrameworkCore.Abstractions	Decoupled EF Core abstractions; use this for features like extended data annotations defined by EF Core
Microsoft.EntityFrameworkCore.Relational	Shared EF Core components for relational database providers
Microsoft.EntityFrameworkCore.Analyzers	C# analyzers for EF Core

We also published the 6.0 preview 6 release of the Microsoft.Data.Sqlite.Core provider for ADO.NET.

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
Maurycy Markowski	Shay Rojansky	Smit Patel

Thank you to our contributors!

We are grateful to our amazing community of contributors. Our success is founded upon the shoulders of your efforts and feedback. If you are interested in contributing but not sure how or would like help, please reach out to us! We want to help you succeed. We would like to publicly acknowledge and thank these contributors for investing in the success of EF Core 6.0.


AkinSabriCam	alexernest	alexpotter10	Ali-YousefiTelori
#1	#1	#1	#1, #2

AlirezaRezaeeIR	andrejs86	AndrewKitu	ardalis
#1	#1	#1	#1

bartoszluka	CaringDev	carlreid	carlreinke
#1	#1, #2	#1, #2	#1, #2

cgrevil	cgrimes01	cincuranet	cuperman007
#1	#1	#1, #2, #3, #4	#1

dan-giddins	dannyjacosta	dennisseders	DickBaker
#1	#1, #2	#1, #2, #3, #4, #5, #6	#1

ErikEJ	fagnercarvalho	FarshanAhamed	filipnavara
#1, #2, #3, #4, #5, #6, #7, #8, #9, #10, #11, #12, #13, #14, #15, #16	#1, #2	#1	#1, #2

garyng	Geoff1900	gfoidl	gieseanw
#1, #2, #3	#1	#1, #2	#1

Giorgi	GitHubPang	gurustron	hez2010
#1, #2, #3, #4	#1, #2	#1	#1, #2

HSchwichtenberg	jaliyaudagedara	jantlee	jeremycook
#1, #2	#1, #2	#1	#1

jing8956	joakimriedel	joaopgrassi	joelmandell
#1	#1, #2, #3	#1, #2	#1

JohnMHigginsPMC	JonasSamuelsson	josemiltonsampaio	KaloyanIT
#1	#1	#1	#1, #2, #3, #4

khalidabuhakmeh	khellang	koenbeuk	kotpal
#1, #2	#1	#1, #2	#1

larsholm	lauxjpn	leonardoporro	lexkazakov
#1, #2	#1, #2, #3, #4, #5, #6	#1	#1

mariuz	marodev	martincostello	MartinWestminster
#1	#1, #2	#1, #2, #3, #4	#1

Marusyk	massytech	MattKomorcec	MaxG117
#1, #2, #3, #4, #5, #6, #7, #8, #9, #10, #11, #12, #13, #14, #15, #16, #17, #18	#1	#1, #2	#1

mefateah	meggima	mguinness	michalczerwinski
#1	#1, #2	#1	#1, #2, #3, #4, #5, #6

mrlife	msawczyn	MSDN-WhiteKnight	natashanikolic
#1, #2, #3, #4	#1	#1	#1

nmichels	nschonni	ntovas	OKTAYKIR
#1, #2	#1, #2, #3, #4	#1, #2	#1

OOberoi	Oxyrus	pkellner	ptupitsyn
#1, #2	#1	#1	#1

ralmsdeveloper	RaymondHuy	riscie	seekingtheoptimal
#1, #2	#1, #2, #3, #4, #5, #6, #7, #8	#1, #2	#1

SergerGood	Shirasho	SimonCropp	smagurauskas
#1, #2, #3, #4, #5, #6, #7, #8, #9, #10	#1	#1, #2	#1, #2

stevendarby	Strepto	taha-ghadirian	teo-tsirpanis
#1, #2	#1, #2	#1, #2	#1, #2

the-wazz	thiggins1990	tkp1n	umitkavala
#1, #2	#1	#1, #2	#1, #2, #3, #4, #5, #6

uncheckederror	Varorbc	vincent1405	vonzshik
#1	#1	#1, #2	#1, #2, #3, #4, #5, #6

vytotas	wdesgardin	wmeints	yesmey
#1	#1, #2	#1, #2	#1, #2, #3, #4, #5, #6

5 comments

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Eugene Ivanoff July 18, 2021 0

When there will support of DateOnly and TimeOnly for SQL Server?
- Brice Lambson July 26, 2021 0
  
  Upvote dotnet/SqlClient#1009 to let ’em know it’s important to you.
Rosdi Kasim July 14, 2021 0

What’s 64 bit identity seed? long int?
- Stevie White July 14, 2021 0
  
  @Rosdi Kasim
  
  That’s what it looks like. See here – Github Issue Pertaining To 64 Bit Identity Seeds
  - Rosdi Kasim July 14, 2021 0
    
    Ah ok.