Question

I’m going to start a new project which is going to be small initially but may grow to big over the years. I’m strongly convinced that I’m going to use ASP.NET MVC with jQuery for UI. I want to go for MySQL as database for some reasons but worried on few things.

I’m totally new to Linq but it seems that it is easier to use once you are familiar with it.

First thing is that accessing data should be easy. So I thought I should use MySQL to Linq but somewhere I read that it is not directly supported but MySQL .NET connector adds support for EntityFramework. I don’t know what are the pros and cons of it. DbLinq is what I also heard. I would love if I can implement repository pattern as it allows to apply filter in logic layer rather than in data access layer. Will it be possible if I use Entity Framework?

I’m also concerned about the performance. Someone told me that if we use Entity framework it fetches lot of data and then filter it. Is that right?

So questions basically are –

1. Is MySQL to Linq possible? If yes where can I get more details on it?
2. Pros and cons of using EntityFramework or DbLinq with MySQL?
3. Will it be easy to access data using EntityFramework or DbLinq with MySQL?
4. Will I be able to implement repository pattern which allows applying filter in logic layer rather than data access layer (when I use EntityFramework with MySQL)
5. Does it fetches hell lot of data from database and then apply filter on it?

If it sounds too many questions from my side in that case, if you can just let me know what you will do (with a considerable reason) in this situation as an experienced person in this area, that should answer my question.

Answer 1

As I am fan of ALT.NET I would recomend you to use NHibernate for your project instead of EntityFramework, you may google for the advantages over it, I am convinced you’ll choose it.