- Reduce start up time by loading finished code first models from a persistent cache
- Fluent API to define indexes
- DbFunctions.Like() to enable writing LINQ queries that translate to LIKE in SQL
- Migrate.exe should support -script option
- EF6 does not work with primary key from sequence
- Update error numbers for SQL Azure Execution Strategy
- Bug: Retrying queries or SQL commands fails with “The SqlParameter is already contained by another SqlParameterCollection”
- Bug: Evaluation of DbQuery.ToString() frequently times out in the debugger

Entity Framework 7 (EF7) Preview 5 has shipped with support for Table-per-Concrete type (TPC) mapping. This blog post will focus on TPC. There are several other enhancements included in Preview 5, such as:

• Support for AT TIME ZONE in SQL Server
• Updates to command and connection interception (#23087, #23085, #17261)
• Addition of the delete behavior attribute

Read the full list of EF7 Preview 5 enhancements. 

• We added support to change installation locations.
• You can Save All your pending changes before you start your update.
• The update dialog provides you even more details about your update during installation.
• C# 7.3 is included in Visual Studio version 15.7.
• We improved solution load time for C# and VB projects.
• We made numerous updates to F# and its tools, with a focus on performance.
• We reduced the time to enable IntelliSense for large .NET Core projects by 25%.
• We made Quick Info improvements and new .NET refactorings like convert for-to-foreach and make private fields readonly.
• We added the ability to publish ASP.NET Core applications to App Service Linux without containers.
• Live Unit Testing works with embedded pdbs and supports projects that use reference assemblies.
• The Test Explorer has more responsive icons during test runs.
• C++ developers can use CodeLens for unit testing.
• We added new rules enforcing items from the C++ Core Guidelines.
• Debugging large solutions with /Debug:fastlink PDBs is more robust.
• CMake integration supports CMake 3.11 and static analysis.
• Python projects support type hints in IntelliSense, and a Run MyPy command has been added to look for typing errors in your code.
• Conda environments are supported in Python projects.
• We added a next version of our Python debugger based on the popular open source pydevd debugger.
• TypeScript 2.8 is included in Visual Studio version 15.7.
• We improved Kestrel HTTPs support during debugging.
• We added support for JavaScript debugging with Microsoft Edge.
• The Debugger supports VSTS and GitHub Authentication for Source Link.
• IntelliTrace’s step-back debugging feature is supported for debugging .NET Core projects.
• We added IntelliTrace support for taking snapshots on exceptions.
• We removed the blocking modal dialog from branch checkouts in Git when a solution or project reload is not required.
• There is an option to choose between OpenSSL and SChannel in Git.
• You can create and associate Azure Key Vaults from within the Visual Studio IDE.
• Visual Studio Tools for Xamarin can automatically install missing Android API levels required by Xamarin.Android projects.
• The Xamarin.Forms XAML editor provides IntelliSense and quick fixes for conditional XAML.
• We added support for Azure, UWP, and additional project types in Visual Studio Build Tools.
• You can create build servers without installing all of Visual Studio.
• The Windows 10 April 2018 Update SDK - Build 17134 is the default required SDK for the Universal Windows Platform development workload.
• We added support for Visual State Management for all UWP apps and more.
• We enabled automatic updates for sideloaded APPX packages.
• You have new tools for migrating to NuGet PackageReference.
• We added support for NuGet package signatures.
• We added Service Fabric Tooling for the 6.2 Service Fabric release.
• We updated Entity Framework Tools to work with the EF 6.2 runtime and to improve reverse engineering of existing databases.

Entity Framework Core (EF Core) 7 is available on NuGet today!

EF Core 7 is the successor to EF Core 6, and can be referred to as EF7 for brevity. EF Core 7 contains many features that help in porting “classic” EF6 applications to use EF7. As such, we encourage people to upgrade existing classic EF applications to use EF7 where possible. See Porting from EF6 to EF Core for more information. 

An MVVM framework for .NET that integrates the Reactive Extensions (Rx) framework 

What's new in the .NET Framework 4.6.1

• Entity Framework 7 RC1 (which we used here), is slow, but later builds are faster. It’s still not going to top any chart, but it’s currently faster than EF6, according to tests with a local build. We’ll update the benchmark with results from RC2 when it’s released.  

2 Entity Framework Alternatives (or Give Me Data!) 

You can download the .NET Framework 4.7.2

• Web Installer
• Offline Installer  

starting with this version, AutoMapper drops support for full .NET framework, as this release targets only netstandard2.1.