The ADO.NET Entity Framework, part of the ADO.NET components of the .NET Framework, is a framework for providing services on data models from Microsoft. The architecture of the ADO.NET Entity Framework, from the bottom up, consists of the following:



Data source specific providers, which abstracts the ADO.NET interfaces to connect to the database when programming against the conceptual schema. Learn more about this with the austin .net developer.

Map provider, which is a database-specific provider that translates the Entity SQL command tree into a query in the native SQL flavor of the database. It includes the Store specific bridge, which is the component that is responsible for translating the generic command tree into a store-specific command tree. Learn more about this with the austin .net developer.

EDM parser and view mapping, which takes the SDL specification of the data model and how it maps onto the underlying relational model and enables programming against the conceptual model. From the relational schema, it creates views of the data corresponding to the conceptual model. It aggregates information from multiple tables in order to aggregate them into an entity, and splits an update to an entity into multiple updates to whichever table contributed to that entity. Learn more about this with the austin .net developer.

Query and update pipeline, which processes queries, filters and update-requests to convert them into canonical command trees which are then converted into store-specific queries by the map provider. Learn more about this with the austin .net developer.

Metadata services, which handle all metadata related to entities, relationships and mappings. Learn more about this with the austin .net developer.

Transactions, which is to integrate with transactional capabilities of the underlying store. If the underlying store does not support transactions, support for it needs to be implemented at this layer. Learn more about this with the austin .net developer.

Conceptual layer API, which is the runtime that exposes the programming model for coding against the conceptual schema. It follows the ADO.NET pattern of using Connection objects to refer to the map provider, using Command objects to send the query, and returning EntityResultSets or EntitySets containing the result. Learn more about this with the austin .net developer.

Disconnected components, which locally caches datasets and entity sets for using the ADO.NET Entity Framework in an occasionally connected environment. Learn more about this with the austin .net developer.

Design tools, such as Mapping Designer are also included with ADO.NET Entity Framework which simplifies the job on mapping a conceptual schema to the relational schema and specifying which properties of an entity type correspond to which table in the database. Learn more about this with the austin .net developer.

Programming layers, which exposes the EDM as programming constructs which can be consumed by programming languages. And High level services, such as reporting services which work on entities rather than relational data. For more information about the .NET Framework family, then visit the austin .net developer for more details.