<p>The ADO.NET Entity Framework is a new way to build the data access layer of your Windows or web applications. It's an Object Relational Mapping (ORM) technology that makes it easy to tie together the data in your database with the objects in your applications, by abstracting the object model of an application from its relational or logical model.<br /><br />This clear and concise book gets you started with the Entity Framework and carefully gives you the skills to speed up your application development by constructing a better data access layer. It shows you how to get the most from the ADO.NET Entity Framework to perform CRUD operations with complex data in your applications.<br /><br />This tutorial starts out with the basics of the Entity Framework, showing plenty of examples to get you started using it in your own code. You will learn how to create an Entity Data Model, and then take this further with Entity types. You will also learn about the Entity Client data provider, learn how to create statements in Entity SQL, and get to grips with ADO.NET Data Services, also known as Project Astoria.</p>