Entity Developer Express Edition

Entity Developer Express Edition is a comprehensive and practical ORM designer especially intended for database administrators and developers who need to create and edit NHibernate, Entity Framework, LinqConnect and LINQ to SQL models visually.

It helps you to create all kinds of mapping, starting from table splitting and inheritance hierarchies, and ending up with SELECT methods and statements.

When you launch the application for the first time, you need to create a new model, option which is available in the File menu. You can either design models from a pre-existing database or simply generate a new database from the model. In case you choose the ‘Database first’ option, you need to select the provider, browse for the proper file, then test the connection.

The ‘Model Explorer’ section, located in the left pane of the program, displays all of the available classes, inheritances, methods, stored procedures, constraints and tables. The right-click menu enables you to add a new class, drag it into the main window, then insert new properties and associations, create a new storage and map the stored procedures.

Each time you are editing an existing ORM model, Entity Developer Express Edition highlights all the errors and warnings and list them in the ‘Error List’ section. This way, you will notice if the current model is not working properly, and after removing all the errors, you can press the ‘Validate’ button in order to refresh the entire information.

The application enables you to create your own unique templates for the application code generation or use one of the existing. By accessing the proper option from the Model menu, you are able to generate DbContext and ObjectContext classes, ASP.NET MVC controller with data access code etc.

To wrap it up, Entity Developer Express Edition introduces new approaches for creating, designing and editing ORM models, thus facilitating the development of database applications.