Entity Framework Core documentation

What EF Core is

Entity Framework Core is Microsoft's object-relational mapper for .NET. You describe your data as C# classes, query it with LINQ, and EF Core translates those queries into SQL, tracks changes and writes them back. It supports SQL Server and Azure SQL, SQLite, PostgreSQL through the Npgsql provider, Cosmos DB and others. EF Core versions follow .NET, so EF Core 10 ships alongside .NET 10.

What the documentation covers

• Getting started: a short tutorial that builds a console app with a model, a database and basic queries.
• Creating a model: entity types, keys, relationships (one-to-many, many-to-many, owned types), indexes, value conversions, concurrency tokens and the Fluent API.
• Managing schemas: migrations with the dotnet ef tool, idempotent SQL scripts and migration bundles for deployment pipelines.
• Querying data: LINQ translation, loading related data with Include, tracking versus no-tracking queries, split queries, raw SQL and global query filters.
• Saving data: change tracking, transactions, concurrency conflicts and the bulk ExecuteUpdate and ExecuteDelete methods added in EF Core 7.
• Performance: a whole section on efficient querying, efficient updating, modelling for performance and diagnosing slow queries with logging.

Is it worth your time?

Yes, if you work in .NET. Most .NET job ads mention EF Core, and most slow .NET apps are slow because of how they use it. The performance section explains the N+1 problem, projections, tracking costs and the cartesian explosion that comes from including several collections, written by the team that builds EF Core.

How to learn from it

Do the getting started tutorial, then read Creating a model and Managing schemas while you build a small project. Before you put anything in production, read the Performance section in full. Turn on SQL logging in Development and compare what you wrote in LINQ with what EF Core sent to the database.

Prerequisites

Comfortable C#, including LINQ and async/await, and basic SQL: SELECT, JOIN, GROUP BY, keys and indexes. EF Core writes SQL for you, but you still need to read it.

Free or paid?

Free. EF Core and its docs are open source under the MIT licence.

What you can do after it

Model a relational database in C#, evolve it safely with migrations, write queries that stay fast as data grows, and explain what SQL your code produces.

Common questions

EF Core or Dapper? Many teams use EF Core for most work and Dapper or raw SQL for a few heavy reports. Measure before switching.

Is the in-memory provider good for tests? The docs advise against it for testing code that relies on real database behaviour; use a real database, for example in a container.