This chapter introduced the relational database model, the ADO.NET Entity Framework, LINQ to Entities and Visual Studio’s visual programming tools for working with databases. You examined the contents of a simple Books database and learned about the relationships among the tables in the database. You used LINQ to Entities and the entity data model classes generated by the IDE to retrieve data from, add new data to, delete data from and update data in a SQL Server Express database.

We discussed the entity data model classes automatically generated by the IDE, such as the DbContext class that manages an app’s interactions with a database. You learned how to use the IDE’s tools to connect to databases and to generate entity data model classes based on an existing database’s schema. You then used the IDE’s drag-and-drop capabilities to automatically generate GUIs for displaying and manipulating database data. In the next chapter, we’ll show how to use asynchronous programming with C#’s async modifier and await operator to take advantage of multicore architectures.