Question

With LINQ to SQL most likely going to not get as much active development as Entity Framework do you think it’s best to switch to Entity Framework?

I’ve personally found EF to be very clunky and hard to use compared to LINQ to SQL which feels very natural.

EDIT: I recently posted an article on my blog about my feelings towards this potential decision…

ADO.NET v LINQ to SQL

Answer 1

IMO, not at the moment.

It is clear (from recent announcements especially) that EF is in for some heavy revisions as the ‘thunderdome‘ scenario plays out between LINQ-to-SQL and EF. Whatever happens, EF (in a few years) will almost certainly look quite different to EF today. Or certainly ‘different enough’ ;-p

As such, my view is: stick with simple. And simple is LINQ-to-SQL.

I don’t see much benefit learning a notoriously complex system if I know it is going to change very soon.

And I’m 100% with you on LINQ-to-SQL ;-p

If I needed something more than LINQ-to-SQL right now, I’d look at NHibernate or maybe LLBLGen Pro.

(edit – as an update, my position has softened a little bit, here and here – but I’m still using LINQ-to-SQL as my primary tool; also – LINQ-to-SQL isn’t quite dead yet ;-p).