Why should I use Entity Framework over Linq2SQL ...

Posted by Refracted Paladin on Stack Overflow See other posts from Stack Overflow or by Refracted Paladin
Published on 2010-04-12T16:41:38Z Indexed on 2010/04/13 21:33 UTC
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linq-to-sql

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entity-framework

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.NET

To be clear, I am not asking for a side by side comparision which has already been asked Ad Nauseum here on SO. I am also Not asking if Linq2Sql is dead as I don't care. What I am asking is this....

I am building internal apps only for a non-profit organization. I am the only developer on staff. We ALWAYS use SQL Server as our Database backend. I design and build the Databases as well. I have used L2S successfully a couple of times already.

Taking all this into consideration can someone offer me a compelling reason to use EF instead of L2S?

I was at Code Camp this weekend and after an hour long demonstration on EF, all of which I could have done in L2S, I asked this same question. The speakers answer was, "L2S is dead..." Very well then! NOT! (see here)

I understand EF is what MS WANTS us to use in the future(see here) and that it offers many more customization options. What I can't figure out is if any of that should, or does, matter for me in this environment.

One particular issue we have here is that I inherited the Core App which was built on 4 different SQL Data bases. L2S has great difficulty with this but when I asked the aforementioned speaker if EF would help me in this regard he said "No!"

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