Important features of Entity Framework 7:
Lightweight and extensible
Instead of use existing Entity Framework 6 APIs, Team decide to start developing from the scratch. You can use only that extensions which are useful to your project. The pattern and concept remain same to use Entity Framework. You can use DbContext/DbSet same way as you are currently using. The advantage of extensible is you can replace and extend it.
New Platforms
EF is most popular ORM that currently includes applications built with technologies such as WPF, WinForms and ASP.NET. After looking at future Microsoft has decided to support remaining platforms where .NET development is common. This includes Windows Store, Windows Phone and the Cloud Optimized .NET.
New Data Stores
Entity Framework was clearly tied with relational data stores. Now onward EF provide great support to non relational data stores also. Relational & non Relational, like Azure table storage.
Optimized Query generation
Based on people’s higher request on EF uservoice “Improved SQL Generation“, Diego Vega (Engineering Manager, Entity Framework) responded positively and start working on this feature. On next or may be final release they will include this feature. EF7 will generate much simpler SQL queries than EF6 for the most common scenarios.
Code first only
Finally Microsoft Team retired EDMX in Entity Framework 7. You can read Rowan Miller’s article EF7 – What Does “Code First Only” really mean. If you still love edmx, you would love to read What about EDMX when EF7 arrives? written by Julie Lerman.
Batch Update
No longer need to use EF batch update utilities to perform batch operations because EF7 has inbuilt support for that. EF 7 no longer send individual command for every insert/update/delete statement. EF 7 will batch multiple statements in single round trip to the database.
Unique Constraints
EF 7 allows you to identify additional unique keys within your entities in addition to the primary key. You can then use these alternate keys as the target of foreign key relationships. A unique constraint is introduced for each alternate key in the model.
