EDMGen2 – Now with Reverse Engineering options

Visual Studio 2008 and .Net 3.5 SP1 come with two tools that are capable of supporting a database-first application design scenario: the EdmGen command-line tool and the New ADO.Net Entity Model item template. These two tools produce Entity Framework metadata artifacts from a database instance, but the generated model and mapping have a one-to-one correspondence with the database. Any inheritance or partitioning relationships that may be naturally present in the schema or data of that instance are not represented in the generated model.

The new version of EdmGen2, recently released on Code Gallery, includes an option “RetrofitModel”. This extension is the result of collaboration with the database team at Microsoft Research, notably summer intern Ankit Malpani. When using this option, EdmGen2 uses data mining techniques to determine if there are TPH, TPT, or vertical partitioning relationships that are inherent in the instance. It then generates a suitable model and mapping in the form of csdl, msl, ssdl, and edmx files. The following figure illustrates one of the patterns that EdmGen2 looks for in an instance, and the resulting model:

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http://blogs.msdn.com/adonet/archive/2009/04/04/edmgen2-now-with-reverse-engineering-options.aspx