LINQ to SQL Designer

Entity Developer for LINQ to SQL, being the best LINQ to SQL designer to-date, allows you to create LINQ to SQL models fastly in a convenient GUI environment.

Entity Developer was initially created as a LINQ to SQL designer and allows you to configure all kinds of LINQ to SQL mapping visually. It offers advanced database-first and model-first approach support, powerful template-based code generation, and ability to test your model with LINQ queries at design-time.

You can purchase Entity Developer for LINQ to SQL license to get support for this specific ORM. Or you can buy the license for Entity Developer Professional with the ability to design models for all the supported ORMs.

LinqConnect

LINQ to SQL is not actively developed any longer. Devart offers its own ORM - LinqConnect, which is LINQ to SQL-compatible and actively supported. It supports not just SQL Server, but also Oracle, MySQL, PostgreSQL, and SQLite and has numerous features, not available in LINQ to SQL.

Model-First, Database-First, or Mixed

With our LINQ to SQL designer you can use either Model-First or Database-First design approach, or you may mix them in any way you like. Easy-to-use Update From Database and Update To Database wizards allow you to synchronize your model and database in any directions at any moment.

Update From Database Wizard tries to preserve manual changes to the model where possible. The Update From Database and Update To Database wizards detect all the database changes that can affect the model and vice versa, e.g. created and deleted tables and views, their columns and foreign keys, column datatype changes, etc.

All changes are displayed in an easy-to-understand form, and you can select only a part of the changes to apply. When updating database schema, Entity Developer considers database server specificity. It does not try to perform unsupported operations.

Tweak the Database-First Settings

When using database-first approach, Entity Developer for LINQ to SQL provides a number of options for creating a model.

You may tweak naming rules for the generated names of the classes and their members. Entity Developer allows you to configure case and pluralization, removing and adding of prefixes and suffixes, etc.

After this you may set the default parameters for the generated classes: default assembly and namespace, default schema, cascade style, strategy for accessing a property value, etc.

Powerful LINQ to SQL Designer

Easy to Start, Easy to Use

Designing LINQ to SQL models with Entity Developer is easy and intuitive. Only the most frequently used mapping parameters are accessed through the editor dialog boxes, making our editors simple and easy to understand. If you need more extended mapping tuning, you can find all the available parameters of a model object in the Properties window.

All the mapping is defined visually, you don't need to manually edit XML mapping files.

Keep Your Model Valid

Our LINQ to SQL designer always validates your model while you are editing it. All errors and warnings automatically appear in the Error List window. Error list displays error or warning message and its location.

You can easily navigate to the object that caused an error by double-clicking it in the Error List window. Thus you may find and fix model errors quickly and conveniently.

Code Generation

Entity Developer has a powerful template-based code generation system that offers a number of ways to configure generation process according to your particular needs.

With Entity Developer for LINQ to SQL you may generate classes and mapping from the existing database in a few steps. Entity Developer can generate persistance aware or POCO classes in C# or Visual Basic.

Our LINQ to SQL designer comes with useful settings for code generation:

Entities Output property allows you to specify output folder for generated entities or output Visual Studio project.
File Per Class option allows you to choose whether to generate classes either into a single code file or into a separate code file for each persistent class. This setting is used by default.
Generate Partial Classes property enables generation of partial classes with a separate file for generated code and a file for user code per class (Code-behind).

Create LINQ to SQL Classes in Visual Studio

Entity Developer seamlessly integrates to Visual Studio. The model is created and edited just like any other Visual Studio project item. Code for a model is generated each time you save the model and is automatically placed to the project, containing the model, by default. You may redirect code output to other Visual Studio project.

Test Your Model at Design-Time

Our LINQ to SQL designer allows viewing and editing data of tables, views, and model entities, create and execute LINQ queries against the model, eliminating the need for additional applications and reducing time for accessing these operations.

Preparing Test Data

With Entity Developer you may perform viewing and quick editing of the database data from the tables in the Database Explorer. This data is editable, allowing you to quickly insert some data into the database to perform some testing.

Designing and Debugging LINQ Queries

Our LINQ to SQL designer allows you to execute LINQ queries directly against the model without the need to write a sample application. You can use our built-in query editor to design queries, which can be saved for future use, and view the returned data and generated SQL.