Entity Framework Power Tools

Entity Framework Power Tools (currently in beta 3) has been released. EF Power Tools is useful mainly in reverse engineering and generating read-only entity data model for code-first.

Download and install Power Tools from Visualstudiogallery

After installing it, when you right click on the C# project, you can see “Entity Framework” option in the context menu.

When right-clicking on a C# project, the following context menu functions are supported:

• Reverse Engineer Code First - Generates POCO classes, derived DbContext and Code First mapping for an existing database.
• Customize Reverse Engineer Templates - Adds the default reverse engineer T4 templates to your project for editing.

When right-clicking on a file containing a derived DbContext class, the following context menu functions are supported:

• View Entity Data Model (Read-only) - Displays a read-only view of the Code First model in the Entity Model Designer.
• View Entity Data Model XML - Displays the EDMX XML representing the underlying Code First model.
• View Entity Data Model DDL SQL - Displays the DDL SQL corresponding to the SSDL in the underlying EDM Model.
• Generate Views - Generates pre-compiled views used by the EF runtime to improve start-up performance. Adds the generated views file to the containing project.

When right-clicking on an Entity Data Model (*.edmx) file, the following context menu function is supported:

• Generate Views - Generates pre-compiled views used by the EF runtime to improve start-up performance. Adds the generated views file to the containing project.

Visit MSDN for step-by-step demonstrates the tasks that you can accomplish with the EF Power Tools.