This is a fork of the "official" EF 6 repository, which hosts the Visual Studio 2015 and 2017 version of EF Power Tools.
Useful design-time utilities for EF 6, accessible through the Visual Studio Solution Explorer context menu.
When right-clicking on a file containing a derived DbContext class, the following context menu functions are available:
- View Entity Data Model (Read-only)
- View Entity Data Model XML
- View Entity Data Model DDL SQL
- Generate Views
When right-clicking on an Entity Data Model .edmx file, the following context menu function is available:
- Generate Views.
If you are looking for Reverse Engineeering tools, I recommend using the EF Reverse POCO Generator Template. You can also use the less advanced "Code First from Database" feature that is included with the standard Visual Studio tooling for EF 6.
A MSDN article about the tool is available here
Release
The Power Tools will remain in "beta" status.
Download the latest released version from Visual Studio MarketPlace
Or just install from Tools, Extensions and Updates in Visual Studio!
Daily build
You can download the daily build from VSIX Gallery.
Install the VSIX Gallery Nightly builds extension to get the latest daily build automatically.
There are lots of ways to contribute, including testing out nighty builds, reporting bugs, and contributing code.
If you encounter a bug or have a feature request, please use the Issue Tracker.
- Added "Customize Reverse Engineering Templates" project menu item
- About dialog added
- VSPackage made Async (to support newer VS versions)
- Support for Visual Studio 2019
- Support for multiple projects with DbContext using same name - thanks to PhilPJL
- Fix error: "Unable to open configSource" with linked config files - thanks to CZEMacLeod
- Clean temp files
Initial release based on the current EF codebase
Even when developing with code first, you might want to graphically view your model. This View Entity Data Model option displays a read-only view of the Code First model in the EF Designer. Even though the designer will let you modify the model, you would not be able to save your changes.
This option allows you to view the EDMX XML representing the underlying Code First model. You probably will not be using this option on too many occasions. One case where you may need to use it is when debugging some Code First issues.
This option allows you to view the DDL SQL script that corresponds to the SSDL in the underlying EDM Model. You may want to use this option when you want to review the tables and columns that will get produced by your model.
You can use Generate Views option to generate pre-compiled views that are used by the Entity Framework runtime to improve start-up performance. The generated views file is added to the project. You can read more about view compilation in the following article: Performance Considerations. The Generate Views option is available when working with Code First and also when working with the EF Designer. When working with Code First, Generate Views option is available when right-clicking on a file that contains a derived DbContext class. When working with the EF Designer, Generate Views option is available when right-clicking on the EDMX file. Note that, every time you change your model you need to re-generate the pre-compiled views by running the GenerateViews command again.