Entity Framework (EF) Core is the rearchitected and rewritten version of the Entity Framework object relational mapping engine for .NET Core applications. It is very light-weight, extensible, and cross platform.

However, high transaction .NET Core applications using EF Core face performance and scalability bottlenecks in the database-tier under peak loads. This is because, although you can linearly scale the application tier by adding more application servers, you cannot add more database servers to scale it.

But, if you use a distributed cache like NCache in your .NET Core applications, you can quickly remove these performance and scalability bottlenecks and handle extreme transaction loads. 

There are two MySQL providers for Entity Framework Core:
- The official one from MySQL: MySql.Data.EntityFrameworkCore. As of now, the latest version is 8.0.19, and works with Entity Framework Core 2.1 (and probably also 2.2). Since EF Core 3.0 is a major version with breaking changes, you cannot use it with this provider.
- The Pomelo provider: Pomelo.EntityFrameworkCore.MySql. There is a 3.1 version of this provider.
In other words, if you want to use EF Core 3.0/3.1 with MySQL, at this point you need to use the Pomelo provider (or wait for the official MySQL one to get released).

Entity Framework Core Part 4 

Today, the Entity Framework Core team announces the sixth preview release of EF Core 5.0. This release includes split queries for related collections, a new “index” attribute, improved exceptions related to query translations, IP address mapping, exposing transaction id for correlation, and much more. 

Announcing WCF Connected Service for .NET Core RC2 and ASP.NET Core RC2

Today, the Entity Framework Core team announces the eighth and final preview release of EF Core 5.0. The next release will be a release candidate (RC). This release includes table-per-type (TPT) mapping, table-valued functions, SQLite table rebuilds for migrations and much more. 

Announcing the first Insider Preview for Windows 11