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Entity Framework Vote of No Confidence

Sign the letterLooking across blogs, Twitter, and the community in general there has been a lot of discussion around Microsoft's forthcoming Entity Framework.

In the midst of the discussion many valid criticisms have been drown out or lost in the noise of the cheerleading, trolling, and marketecture generated by community Gloryhounds, Redmond, and any number of other super-pro-Microsoft groups/identities. Even the alt.net community has been guilty of adding to the noise and confusion.

The noise has gotten so loud that the message itself has been lost.

Voice your concern

But through that noise it looks like a voice may finally be heard, or at least serve as a unifying call for others to follow, in the form of an open letter.

A number of people have worked on an open letter to Microsoft and the Entity Framework team. It outlines the various deficiencies in the EF specifically related to concepts a lot of us value as solid working practice. Every effort has been made to balance honesty with diplomacy and cooperation.

I would urge anyone who believes in the deficiencies outlined in the letter to sign the letter and then support the message. Blog it, Twitter it, discuss it, print it out and leave copies laying around your team room.

Remember, the goal of the letter is not to pull the plug on the Entity Framework, its to raise awareness among Microsoft customers as to the risks involved with adopting it.

Educate. Spread the message.

ADO .NET Entity Framework Vote of No Confidence.

What others are saying.

# re: Entity Framework Vote of No Confidence
Gravatar Milan Negovan
Jun 23, 2008
Done! Thanks for sharing, Steve.
# re: Entity Framework Vote of No Confidence
Gravatar Jeff Hunsaker
Jun 23, 2008
I don't necessarily disagree with what is put forth in this "no confidence vote". However, I highlight the following as suspect:

1. Why are the authors failing to reveal themselves?
2. Why now? EF will RTM in weeks. If there were issues, why not express them last year? CTP has been out for over a year. C'mon. It's just not helpful.
3. EF isn't even v1.0. Nothing any of us has released was perfect v1.0.

I'm sure these are .Net heavyweights and it's not a bad message to send but IMO, the passive aggressive approach here is LAMZ. If one is so consequential to the industry, take responsibility to do something productive...a reasonable time before a ship date.
# re: Entity Framework Vote of No Confidence
Gravatar Jeremy D. Miller
Jun 23, 2008
Jeff,

1.) The document was written mostly by the first dozen names or so on the signatory list, including myself.

2.) The EF team has already heard all of this feedback going back at least to March of 2007, but was either unwilling or unable to do anything about it (I vote for unable. I think they've coded themselves into a nasty corner).

3.) It's not so much that it's imperfect so much as it's very invasive, and the very usage of the EF needs to change.

There's no passive agressiveness here. We've been very vocal in regards to the EF. This is mostly about warning teams that might try to adopt the EF without any prior knowledge. More importantly, it's to help out teams that want to use something besides EF and need to fight off the inevitable political pressure to use the MS solution.
# re: Entity Framework Vote of No Confidence
Gravatar Steven Harman
Jun 23, 2008
@Jeff,

1) I can't speak directly for the authors, but I can tell you that the point of the letter is not to get recognition for the authors. The message is from/by everyone who signed it... from the community, not just the subset who put the message into words.

2) You are waaaay off base here my friend. These very same issues have been brought up to the product team time & time again. Starting back at the MVP Summit in 2007, then via several other channels thru the year, and then again the exact same deficiencies were discussed with the product team at the 2008 MVP Summit.

And what happened? Nothing at all!

Whether they wouldn't change or couldn't change, the fact is nothing has happened to address the concerns raised by the community.

3) Please see response to #2 above.

Now that you have a bit better understanding as to the history of this struggle, are you willing to step up, join in, and help educate?
# re: Entity Framework Vote of No Confidence
Gravatar Jimmy Bogard
Jun 23, 2008
@Jeff

1.

The names were not omitted on purpose. The original authors already signed the petition. What will the names give you that the signatures don't?

2.

Now, because the authors and others have been in talks with the EF team for a long time. These issues were expressed over a year ago, and were continued to be expressed directly to the EF team, in person, face-to-face. At this point, it's about educating the customers.

3.

It's not about pre-beta software. It's about the direction, focus and vision of the team. The architecture of the product is done, and can't be un-done (i.e., the three XML files).

These concerns have been given to the EF team at a point where direction could have changed. It didn't.
# re: Entity Framework Vote of No Confidence
Gravatar Jeff Hunsaker
Jun 23, 2008
@Steven, no need to draw your sword, my friend. To be clear, I don't disagree with the message. I delivered a similar message in a public presentation last month... (which you attended ;-).

I'll buy Jeremy's motivation for warning customers but I'm still hung up on timing. Seems like the nuclear option. I would have liked to see a signatory late last summer. If DevDiv truly isn't listening to the MVPs then there's a far bigger issue than EF going awry.

EF may be flawed but I would urge us not to cut it off at the knees when it's not even released. Many shops (for a variety of reasons) just can't go with an NHibernate, SubSonic, etc. If EF misses the mark, folks will learn this quickly, the community will call it out, and the product group will [hopefully] learn from the mistake--and make it better. But at this point, we haven't even given it a real chance.
# re: Entity Framework Vote of No Confidence
Gravatar Steven Harman
Jun 23, 2008
@Jeff,

I wasn't aiming to lop your head off with the "sword of knowledge" :) I just want to make sure we're all on the same page when it comes to the time line and history of raising these concerns to the EF team.

Again, the point is to educate and give customers some sort of documentation and support for why they don't want to use EF when they come up against resistance to alternatives. Why wait around for EF to get out in the wild and for everyone to suffer the pains we can already see coming? Isn't it better to at least try to get the message out?

Sure, it may be too late for the EF team to do anything about the deficiencies listed. But its never too late to educate others as to the risks involved with adopting an approach that experience tells us is both painful in practice, and counter to the principles to which we adhere.
# re: Entity Framework Vote of No Confidence
Gravatar Tom Pester
Jun 24, 2008
The Entity Framework Team has started work on Version 2 and invites people to take part in the design process/give feedback

blogs.msdn.com/.../...y-in-the-design-process.aspx
# Entity Framework vote of no confidence
Gravatar GrabBag<T>
Jun 24, 2008
As was announced initially (as far as I can tell) on Bil Simser's blog, some concerned citizens of
# re: Entity Framework Vote of No Confidence
Gravatar Anoymous
Jun 27, 2008
Cutting off Their Noses to Spite Their Faces

Open Letter

Dear EF Petitions,

I have read the online petition and don't know what you aim to gain from this? Complaining about whether implicit lazy loading and canonical shared models should be supported is ridiculous in a beta product. Although, your criticism was constructive creating a public forum is frankly "Cutting off your noses to spite your face ". I'm personally dismayed with the MVPs who signed, they should know better. Most of you have direct connections into the product team and can express these opinions directly to them. Why do this in public? I have a lot of friends in Microsoft not just because they are business colleagues but hard working individuals who have spent 11 hour days trying to create something unique. What if you were told your code is crap… see what I mean?
I think that you’re missing the point with the EF. Although it has issues, it’s the first issue. I would like to see of your code to see if you get it right first time.
The transparent approach announcement will prevent this type of thing happening again. If you have this press release why don’t you back down? Personal glory.. or just kicking the big guy?

Anonymous
# 
Gravatar CodeThinked
Jun 28, 2008
An Open Letter to the ALT.NET Community
# re: Entity Framework Vote of No Confidence
Gravatar Steven Harman
Jun 30, 2008
@anonymous,
I'm tempted to delete your entire comment. Any argument coming from one who refuses to be identified and will only take a moral stand from a position of anonymity is hollow and of questionable credibility to start.

That said, I want to address some of your points, so I'm going to let it slide... this time. :)

>> Complaining about whether implicit lazy loading and canonical shared models should be supported is ridiculous in a beta product.

Seriously... seriously? You act as if this is the first time these deficiencies have been brought up. If you look you'll find the discussion goes back more than a year (see Jeremy's reply above).

>> I'm personally dismayed with the MVPs who signed, they should know better.

As both an MVP and a VoNC signatory, I'm personally dismayed by any MVP who feels they are obligated in any way to push forth a Microsoft-friendly agenda, ever. Especially if that agenda is at odds with their own professional values and principles.

I'm not saying that all MVP's need to agree with the VoNC, not at all. I'm saying that NO MVP should be made to feel that he/she needs to sacrifice their professional ethics in order to tote a Microsoft company line.

I believe an MVP's duty is not to Microsoft, but to Microsoft's community and customers.

>> If you have this press release why don’t you back down? Personal glory.. or just kicking the big guy?

Education. It is my goal, and I believe the goal of many of the VoNC signatories and the ALT.NET community, to raise the minimum bar of the broader development community... our selves included!

See the comments in Chad Myer's recent post on why he's not a real world developer for further discussion. We need to stop protecting the castles, let go of the old-think ways of doing things, and instead embrace education and the changes that come with it.
# re: Entity Framework Vote of No Confidence
Gravatar Scott Bellware
Jun 30, 2008
Anoymous,

> I have a lot of friends in Microsoft not just because
> they are business colleagues but hard working
> individuals who have spent 11 hour days trying to
> create something unique. What if you were told your
> code is crap… see what I mean?

If I spend 11 hour days trying to create something unique, but I succeed only in duplicating a set of well-known problems, I would personally expect to be held accountable.

The lack of accountability in the Microsoft space is a plague of social consciousness.

There are no prizes for just doing work. The goal is excellence, and doing it right the first time. We have process control methodologies that allow us to accomplish this. If Microsoft chooses to ignore advances in the industrialization of software development going on outside its walls, then praise for merely working hard is the last thing that I would personally expect to heap up its employees.
# re: Entity Framework Vote of No Confidence
Gravatar Damon Wilder Carr
Jun 30, 2008
We cover this in the recent announcement on NHibermate Beta 1 here:

damon.agilefactor.com/.../nhibernate-20-goes-be...

As long-time NHibernate users we are forced to remember now just how much we take for granted. The letter is well written in that is is fairly hard to refute the points made. What is far more important I believe, is if there was NO ALTERNATIVE to what they were offering, it would be very different. However as we DO have an alternative in NHibermate there responses seem more grounded in issues of faith, not issues of fact or logic.

Thanks by the way for being a strong voice in our community.

Kind Regards,
Damon Wilder Carr, CTO agilefactor
domain.dot.net team project lead
# re: Entity Framework Vote of No Confidence
Gravatar Turkey
Aug 01, 2008
thanks you .. perfect docs
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