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Asked: 2026-05-16T05:02:49+00:00

I would like to know the pros and cons of using EF4 Code-First approach.

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I would like to know the pros and cons of using EF4 Code-First approach. Can we duplicate all features that EF4 generated classes offer like Lazy Loading, loading related entities, etc?

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  1. Editorial Team

    Pros

    1. Lightweight entity classes or POCO based.
    2. More control over entity classes since you code them yourself rather than depending on EF to generate them. This means you don’t have to define partial classes to do data annotations.
    3. Option to never have to specify mapping anywhere. Convention takes over configuration.
    4. DbContext follows the repository pattern.
    5. Lazy loading, related entity loading all taken care of for you. For example a Post model can declare Author model in the POCO and EF Code first will map this relation automatically. Again use of convention makes us so productive.
    6. Works great for greenfield applications.
    7. ASP.NET MVC view generation works great.
    8. ModelBinder works as per normal.

    Cons

    1. No API support for customizing the database mapping convention like in Fluent nHibernate.
    2. Bit difficult to map to existing databases.(This might change in the release version).

    For sample code and mapping to existing databases using EF 4.0 Code First see this blog post.
    http://theminimalistdeveloper.com/2010/07/28/how-to-map-pocos-to-existing-databases-in-entity-framework-4-0-code-first-and-asp-net-mvc-2/

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