So I've started to add Entity Framework 4 into a legacy web application (ASP.NET WebForms).

As a start I have auto-generated some entities from the database. Also I want to apply Repository Pattern.

There is an entity called Visitor and its repository VisitorRepository

In VisitorRepository I have the following method:

public IEnumerable<Visitor> GetActiveVisitors()
{
    var visitors = 
        from v in _context.Visitors
        where v.IsActive
        select new Visitor
        {
            VisitorID = v.VisitorID,
            EmailAddress = v.EmailAddress,
            RegisterDate = v.RegisterDate,
            Company = v.Company,
            Position = v.Position,
            FirstName = v.FirstName,
            LastName = v.LastName
        };

    return visitors.ToList();
}

That List is then bound to a repeater and when trying to do <%# Eval('EmailAddress') #%> it throws the following exception.

The entity or complex type 'Model.Visitor' cannot be constructed in a LINQ to Entities query.

A) Why is this happening? How I can workaround this? Do I need to select an anonymous type and then use that to initialize my entities???

B) Why every example I've seen makes use of 'select new' (anonymous object) instead of initializing a known type? Anonymous types are useless unless you are retrieving the data and showing it in the same layer. As far as I know anonymous types cannot be returned from methods? So what's the real point of them???

Thank you all