Chapter 1, Using Entity Framework in the Real World, introduces you to the structure of the sample project, and we will see some examples of how to use Entity Framework in a real MVC application.

Chapter 2, Mapping Entities, presents the way to configure the mapping of entities and properties and relations between entities.

Chapter 3, Validation and Changes, talks about how Entity Framework detects modifications made to entities, and how we can intercept those modifications, or apply our custom validation logic to it.

Chapter 4, Transactions and Concurrency Control, covers ACID transactions and optimistic concurrency control.

Chapter 5, Querying, covers the many querying options available to Entity Framework Core, some of which are quite new.

Chapter 6, Advanced Scenarios, presents some more advanced scenarios.

Chapter 7, Performance and Scalability, introduces you to some tips related to how we can make our application more responsive and scalable.

Appendix, Pitfalls, presents a list of pitfalls, or anti-patterns, regarding Entity Framework Core usage.

All you need is .NET Core, including Entity Framework Core, together with an edition of Visual Studio 2015 that supports it (the free Community Edition will work).

We will be using SQL Server as the relational database (any version starting with 2012 will do, in any edition), including Express.

This book is for .NET developers who work with relational databases on a daily basis and understand the basics of Entity Framework, but now want to use it in a more efficient manner. You are expected to have some prior knowledge of Entity Framework.

In this book, you will find several headings that appear frequently (Getting ready, How to do it, How it works, There's more, and See also).

To give clear instructions on how to complete a recipe, we use these sections as follows:

In this book, you will find a number of text styles that distinguish between different kinds of information. Here are some examples of these styles and an explanation of their meaning.

Code words in text, database table names, folder names, filenames, file extensions, pathnames, dummy URLs, user input, and Twitter handles are shown as follows: "Create an entity with the name MyEntity in the BusinessLogic project."

A block of code is set as follows:

namespace BusinessLogic
{
  public class Post : BlogContent
  {
    public string Body { get; set; }
  }
}

When we wish to draw your attention to a particular part of a code block, the relevant lines or items are set in bold:

namespace BusinessLogic
{
  public class Post : BlogContent
  {
    public string Body { get; set; }
  }
}

New terms and important words are shown in bold. Words that you see on the screen, for example, in menus or dialog boxes, appear in the text like this: "Open Using EF Core Solution from the included source code examples.

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