If you have an existing database, choose the database first approach. When you say scaffolding, I think you just mean the ability to CRUD various entities. There are also ASP.NET MVC Scaffolding Templates that create the MVC pages for CRUD as well, combined
with Entity Framework you could create a CRUD application very quickly. For a tutorial, see this article: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/data/gg685489
If you want to write code and just code, and then let EF figure out how to save your classes to the database, use the code-first approach.
And if you do not have a database and want to use a designer for the modeling experience because you are a visual person (and not code-first), use the model first approach.
Darrell Norton, MVP
Darrell Norton's Blog Please click "Mark as Answer" if this helped you.
Marked as answer by 3v3rhart on Feb 03, 2012 02:02 PM
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Re: Entity Framework CRUD Scaffolding v existing SQL database
Feb 02, 2012 09:28 AM|LINK
There are three approaches for using EF:
Code-First
Model-First
Database-First
If you have an existing database, choose the database first approach. When you say scaffolding, I think you just mean the ability to CRUD various entities. There are also ASP.NET MVC Scaffolding Templates that create the MVC pages for CRUD as well, combined with Entity Framework you could create a CRUD application very quickly. For a tutorial, see this article: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/data/gg685489
If you want to write code and just code, and then let EF figure out how to save your classes to the database, use the code-first approach.
And if you do not have a database and want to use a designer for the modeling experience because you are a visual person (and not code-first), use the model first approach.
Darrell Norton's Blog
Please click "Mark as Answer" if this helped you.