Oracle Releases Provider with EF 4 Support (but not really EF 4.1 and EF4.2)

Oracle has finally released it’s version of ODP.NET that supports Entity Framework for use in production environments.

This is great news for many developers! 

And they report that this release supports EF 4.1 and EF 4.2. That should mean Code First and DbContext but thanks to Frans Bouma sending me the limitations doc (that is part of the installation ) we can see that they aren’t! Too bad.

7. ODP.NET 11.2.0.3 does not support Code First nor the DbContext APIs.

So, that means “not really EF 4.1 and EF 4.2 support” in my opinion. But they told us already that Code First & DbContext weren't going to make it in. So it was just the momentary surprise of misunderstanding their meaning about EF4.1 & 4.2 support that deflated me a bit. ;)

Howver...I imagine Code First and DbContext are still leading edge for the types of big corporations that use Oracle. The core EF 4 support is a big deal.

I’ll follow up with Oracle for clarification.

More from Oracle (including downloads) here: http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/topics/dotnet/whatsnew/index.html