Purchase Advice

[mcinnes01]

Hi,

I was wondering if you could help me, I am looking to buy some drivers for a project I am working on and wondered if any or some of your products would enable me to achieve what I am trying to do.

Basically I have started off developing an ASP.NET MVC 4 application using EF4.1, the application has been written so far as code first with a repository pattern to perform database actions.

This generates the SQL database that the application will use to store data, however I need to pull in data for queries from our HR system which is in an Oracle 11g database.

The application I am building is a payroll template so it will generate details, pull in data from the HR system, validate against the HR system and use tables from the HR system as reference tables.

I wanted to be able to continue working with EF and the code first approach and be able to query data and link to the tables in HR system, the same way I link to tables that have been generated in the application.

I don't currently use any stored procedures although as these are much faster I may want to do this in the future.

As far as I am aware oracles ODP.NET drivers aren't supporting Code first yet and don't support stored procedures.

I would really appreciate it if you could recommend some of your products that would enable me to do this and also if you can point me towards some code examples so I can see how it would integrate in with what I have done so far.

A really important thing for me is to be able to create relationships between the Oracle tables from the existing database and the Code first tables from my application, is this possible with your products and if so which?

I don't really know much about NHibernate either (I'm quite new with all this), but is this something that you would recommend to use as well to achieve the above or can it be done entirely with your products?

Thanks in advance for your help and I hope you can help me out.

Many thanks,

Andy

[Shalex]

dotConnect for Oracle Professional Edition fully supports Entity Framework Code-First: http://blogs.devart.com/dotconnect/enti ... qlite.html. Entity Framework Code-First Migrations are supported as well: http://blogs.devart.com/dotconnect/enti ... qlite.html.

Entity Framework Code First with fluent mapping itself doesn't support stored procedures: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library ... 03%29.aspx. We recommend you to contact Microsoft about timeframe. The corresponding official Entity Framework UserVoice suggestion is here: http://data.uservoice.com/forums/72025- ... procedures.

If you do not need a fluent mapping, you can use stored procedures with DbContext when working with EF v4.1/4.2. For this, you can use DbContext Template in Entity Developer: http://blogs.devart.com/dotconnect/enti ... plate.html. If you set template's FluentMapping to False, DbContext's methods will be generated for all stored procedures which are added to the model.

[mcinnes01]

Hi Thanks for the quick reply,

Does dotConnect Universal have all the features of dotConnect Oracle and more?

Also does Entity Manager come bundled with dotConnect and if so is it Entity Manager or DotConnect I need to buy, or both?

Finally do both these products allow you to circumvent the oracle client and are there any associated speed constraints in doing so or would you say the benefits of not using the oracle client far outweigh a reduction in speed?

Many thanks,

Andy

[Shalex]

Does dotConnect Universal have all the features of dotConnect Oracle and more?

The Professional Edition of dotConnect Universal includes the run time of the Standard Edition of dotConnect for Oracle: http://www.devart.com/dotconnect/oracle/editions.html.

does Entity Manager come bundled with dotConnect and if so is it Entity Manager or DotConnect I need to buy, or both?

dotConnect for Oracle Professional (and Developer) Edition includes Entity Developer for dotConnect which allows to create and manage the Entity Frameword and LinqConnect models.
dotConnect Universal does no support any ORM (and Entity Developer is not available here).

do both these products allow you to circumvent the oracle client and are there any associated speed constraints in doing so or would you say the benefits of not using the oracle client far outweigh a reduction in speed?

dotConnect for Oracle Standard/Professional/Developer supports the Direct mode. The performance of dotConnect for Oracle in the OCI mode is approximately the same as the one of ODP.NET. The Direct mode is a bit slower but there is no need to install Oracle client in this case.

[mcinnes01]

Thank you I think that answers my question and I will be ordering the developer edition of dotConnect for Oracle.

Andy