An update on a pending entry (WCF and EF POCO Objects)

Hi Everyone,

Well, I said I’d do it, and I will be – I’ve spent several hours putting together a sample DB and solution which demonstrates how to support Entity Framework (v4) POCO objects serialized in and out of WCF Services.

In a word, it’s going to be a lengthy article – maybe even several articles – as there are many things to address.  I was stuck on the last part of the scenario – sending objects back to be updated, but in the last 30 minutes I remembered what had to be done.

The sample solution will contain a test DB schema, a WCF Service project, a test client project (a console application) and some additional projects (class libraries) as well as an Entity Framework (v4) EDMX model which has been converted into POCO objects using the POCO Template Generator which you can install via Visual Studio 2010.

So now that the project is working in an end-to-end scenario, all I have to do is write up notes, capture some screenshots and also make notes of potential pitfalls and errors.  This is tricky stuff, but it is quite possible to accomplish.  Stay tuned, as the first post will be coming out this week!  If you want to be prepared in advance, I strongly suggest you have a play at generating POCO objects for your existing Entity Framework (v4) model.

Here’s a quick sample of things to come..

• This is a screenshot from SQL Management Studio’s SQL Diagrams, showing the raw schema
• Next we have the EDMX (Entity Framework Entity Model) in all its glory

• A screenshot of how to access the Code Generation template options from the EDMX designer
• Next, we have a screenshot of the Online Templates – note the ADO.Net C# POCO Entity Generator is the first item

/R