Am am presenting to the VP and a new consulting company we've hired why we use LLBL. They prefer the Entity Framework. As I am not that familiar yet with it, could I get 5 or so bullet points for a PowerPoint slide on why LLBL brings more to the table.

I am reading this now, which helps: http://weblogs.asp.net/fbouma/archive/2008/05/19/why-use-the-entity-framework-yeah-why-exactly.aspx

Thanks, Ian

1. you/your team already knows LLBL. you would need to learn EF
2. LLBL is a mature tool. EF is brand new.
3. LLBL is very easy to configure. not sure about EF, but I know it's very heavy in xml
4. LLBL is very easy to version control. because of all the XML with EF there can be many conflicts which are not easily resolved.
5. EF only runs on .net 3.5. (this may not be an issue)

These are all opinions, so they aren't worth that much. I would download EF and experiment with it. Run it through some of your current scenarios to determine how it compares.

Maybe EF is slower to execute updates. Maybe EF is more difficult to configure complex relationships. Maybe you find EF is better. (In which case you should consider EF as an option).

Jason: the .lgp file is a binary blob so there's actually no versioning/merging in sourcecontrol at the moment. The EF edmx file isn't versionable as well though (due to the designer stuff which is also inside the project file )

for the rest, good points! Ian, have you looked at the powerpoints on our website?

I have looked around but haven't seen a specific EF comparison. Is there one?

ianvink wrote:

I have looked around but haven't seen a specific EF comparison. Is there one?

No, but the points made are of course valid for EF as well.

The EF is actually also a bit immature, and has rough edges you probably don't want to work with at the moment. I.o.w.: do you want to push your developers to use the EF which results in higher costs as more time has to be spend on using EF, not only by learning the new framework but also to work with a limited framework (less features and limitations) ?

In the ppt for Technical managers, on the 'Convince your manager' page here: http://www.llblgen.com/pages/convince.aspx is a slide which compares EF with LLBLGen Pro. That might help.