It was in August last month when Microsoft released Entity Frameworks Core 3.0 Preview 8 and Entity Framework 6.3 Preview 8. It was way back in 2008 when Entity Framework 6 (EF6) was released. It used to run on the .NET Framework 4.x which is available only on Windows. Entity Framework Core (EF Core) is a comprehensive cross-platform replica of EF6 that has the prowess of running on .NET Core or .NET Framework. If you wish to get a comprehensive feature comparison between EF Core and EF6, click here.

Due to the tight schedule of the release calendar, both .NET Core 3.0 Preview 8 and ASP.NET Core Preview 8 were made available on the same day. This is a huge revelation for a professional .NET development company since these two releases will have a huge impact on the .NET development community as a whole.

One fantastic part of the Entity Framework 6.3 release is that it supports Entity Framework 6 (EF6) on .NET Core. With the release of Preview 8 assists in achieving this goal by providing the acumen to execute migration commands against .NET Core projects in Visual Studio. The primary developments on EF6.3 will be concentrated on fixing bugs until the official release of EF6.3. There is one particular issue that has created much discussion amongst dedicated .Net developers that involve the creation of a cross-platform command-line tool for migrations commands. You can check out the thread that consists of the public discussion on this topic here.

The new preview for EF Core 3.0 revolves around fixes for 68 total issues that have been resolved since Preview 7. Some of these issues are restoring functionalities previously disabled as a result of the work connected with the new LinQ implementation, like explicitly compiling queries and fixing the Lambda translation in SqlTranslator. Some of the other updates encompass several fixes connected to the Cosmos DB and the upgrade of both the SQL Server and the Cosmos DB providers. You can view the comprehensive list of issues that have been fixed in this release here.

With this release, most of the functionalities connected with the new EF Core LINQ implementation are done and dusted. However, there are a few bugs and limitations that still are prevalent. Microsoft has informed explicitly that the in-memory provider is still minimal, and the global query filters are still not correctly executed to navigation properties (a fix for this bug is already present in the daily builds).

As with the last preview, Microsoft has recommended switching to a daily build of EF Core 3.0 as a result of a quick development process. The company is also continually updating the list of breaking changes in EF Core 3.0.